


Ashes, Ashes

by sporklift



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - In Storybrooke | Cursed, Character Study, Dark, Disney characters running amok, Easter eggs EVERYWHERE, M/M, Pan Wins, Ship Examination, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, What-If, and a whole helluva lot of subtext., resurrection fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7060519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporklift/pseuds/sporklift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Successfully casting the Dark Curse over Storybrooke, for Peter, was just the first step. The second cashes in on an old promise. From there? It’s all part of the game and of the curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Long story short, **in an attempt to make fun of OUAT canon, I ended up getting my nerd on.** Panlix style, because I live in the shipping trash can. 
> 
> I'm excited to get this up! I’ve literally spend years on the headcanons and tiny details this story is rooted in and a little over six months writing and drafting. Needless to say, **it’s been a long time coming and I’m super excited to share this with you all.** Any of you who are left in the Panlix fandom and/or just thought this looked interesting. As always, comments and feedback are adored and coveted. 
> 
> Every possible chance to fit in other Disney characters, I took. I regret nothing. 
> 
> My **updating schedule** is on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and will probably only take about three weeks to finish, if you prefer to wait till stories are done to read them. 
> 
> Mega thanks to everyone who helped me out along the way throughout the years and in the last six months - I'll put up my usual acknowledgement notes up at the end of chapter 8. 
> 
> Without further ado, please enjoy! <3

 

> _Ring around the rosy,_
> 
> _Pocket full of posies,_
> 
> _Ashes, ashes,_
> 
> _We all fall down._
> 
>  
> 
>  

 

 

Time tables, schedules, agendas. Something about them was, to Peter, sloppy and artless. On Neverland, the days could last one hundred hours or fifty minutes depending on his mood. In Storybrooke, he could feel a visceral sting every time the second hand kinked forward. He was waiting in the cavity of Henry's body for the right time to pounce, suspended in a field of potential energy. Everything whizzed by. The reunion with Felix came and went without fanfare. Peter had knocked out the guards in two seconds, in favor of all those addictive praises Felix sang to him. And, after the song, Peter set about stretching the truth about the curse, building up its bombast. They moved quickly from the hilltop to the well. Small feet pattered against the dewy ground, fireflies strolled by on air, holding their little rumps of pixie dust close by.

They walked, slow, gaits shorter than normal, courtesy of Henry's legs. Felix nearly at a standstill, despite the telltale twitches in his fingertips. He wanted to finish the preface, he wanted to move on to New Neverland. If only he knew.

But as it was, Felix fixated on the grass under his feet as he slumped alongside Peter as he said, "It's ironic."

"How so?" Peter asked, the sweat building in his palm against the scroll, Henry's small voice stupefying.

"This, it reminds me of Neverland already."

Snorting, Peter peered around. Unless Felix assumed every wood in the world, with glowing fireflies leaving behind strands of pixie dust in the air, looked like Neverland. "Good to see your imagination's coming back. Well, enjoy it while it lasts."

"What do you mean?"

"It'll smell a lot more like oil after I cast it."

"Oil?" Felix's lips drew into a frown as he slid his long spindly fingers by a low-hanging branch to spin him forward. "I thought we were making a new Neverland?"

Damn. Peter had been hoping to do this at the well. Buy them some more time to sort out the final details. Buy himself more time to absorb the glimmer in Felix's eyes before light's-out. Remind himself of the page he'd ripped from a book of deep, dark, secret magic, tucked in his pocket to make the weight of the scroll okay again.

The curse, as written, carried the magic weight of Regina's burdens, not of Peter's. Small, fairytale town and the chance to begin anew for the Evil Queen. Some kind of bizarre do-over and chance to be respected and (perhaps, no matter how ill-guided the notion) maybe even beloved. Needless to say, not the sort of curse Peter would cast for himself.

"We don't have a jungle, we don't have the power of belief. We'll have other things. The kind of magic we had in Misthaven. But we need a bigger playground; we can't get away with nearly as much if the town is this close-knit. Besides, this curse, it's got parameters."

Offering a dry laugh, Felix asked, "Would you expect anything different from Rumplestiltskin?"

Peter could look Felix in the eye from his place on the log, his chest flushed hot air, and he snickered at the thought. "He does tend to love his annoyingly specific projects, doesn't he?" Moving along, he continued to explain. "The curse does a few things: it stops time and aging, no one can leave, gives everyone a new identity, and they live in this town. Now I _could_ magic in a new climate, jungle - fill it with overgrowth - but there's nothing clever there. At least nothing clever enough."

"So what were you thinking?"

Jumping down from the log, Peter continued, pulling out the scroll to mark his intentions along the parchment. "I'll do the opposite. New Neverland won't be a jungle, it'll be a city. Tall skyscrapers, construction scaffolding, suffocating in its own smog. The Evil Queen cursed her kingdom, I'll curse _realms._ I'llreach into Neverland, the Enchanted Forest, Wonderland - whatever else is in arm's reach - make it a place you can get lost in and have an adventure a day. Neverland in spirit, Boston in face."

"...Boston?"

"That's not the important part, Felix. Point is, we're going metro." Perhaps it was the angle Peter was looking at, but Felix didn't seem entirely sure what _metro_ meant. But this wasn't the time to start getting annoyed.

They turned around a tree, and when he looked over, Peter could tell Felix was burning to ask more. Self-deprecation read clear on his face.

Giving a sigh and trying to raise his brows to the best effect, Peter said, "You may as well ask whatever it is you're fixating on."

Answering questions was, after all, the best way to alleviate Regina's weight and inject his own. They didn't have too much longer. The Heroes would have gotten wise; the magic in his stomach tingled, over accustomed to still having decades to figure out his fate.

Felix's voice, calm and curious, pulled him from those harsh thoughts. "How do we fit? Will everyone have false memories we aren't part of?"

"No." Peter said, hopping over some animal's burrow as he walked, "We'll be integrated. Have our own set of false memories and a cursed identity. The difference is we'll remember Neverland, too."

A few more paces, and Felix asked, "What of the Lost Boys?"

Peter frowned, looking up to his friend and noticing the hardening of his jawline. Rugged and stiff like the answer would, one way or another, hurt him. "Figured I'd make scholars out of 'em, and anyone in our age range. Give them a place to stay, apart from the adult world."

"They betrayed us." Felix blinked, the anger edging in his voice. "You'll let them walk?"

"I never said that - tsk, tsk. Don't assume so much."

"You're handing them their freedom."

"I'm not letting them get those families they wanted so badly, now am I?"

Felix's face split into one of the widest grins he'd seen in a long time. Through the mist, he could see the outline of their destination; the well, the source of the magic and connection to other realms. This was it. Peter wasn't the sort of boy who needed extra nerve, not ever, but he took a breath as the outline materialized before him. "Will they suffer, at least, for what they did?"

"It'll be a curse. Nobody will be _happy_ but us."

He could see how very much Felix liked this idea. How he brightened at the thought of living on the top of the heap, gloating silently over all the prodigal brothers. He'd like it, he'd like it a lot. But he had to be torn down first. But they'd get there. They had to. What good was casting an extraordinary curse if nobody _knew_ Peter had done something extraordinary?

It wasn't forever. But they were running out of time to make all the cogs slip into place.

The next time he spoke, Felix's voice was soft. His countertenor light, edged on adoration. The young excitable heart in Peter's chest shook against Henry's ribs.

"You never cease to amaze me, Peter."

 

* * *

 

 

Although the Heroes were approximately two paces behind where Peter had assumed they'd be, it'd been a damn close call. The Savior had taken Pandora's box to the town line and attempted to shoot "Pan." Henry had talked himself out of an untimely demise. From there, they'd set about switching their bodies back.

Which was a damn shame; Peter had wanted to watch from the clocktower. Wanted to see his curse overtake the small down and let the skyscrapers pierce through the ground and cast shadows over the bay. As it was, he spent his last two minutes in argument with Rumplestiltskin.

At least he got to tear his son down for what he'd made him do. For all his plans and all the times he foiled and his hatred against Peter Pan. The ungrateful crawling reptile. Peter was actually starting to believe what he'd told Felix: he'd never loved Rumple.

"Down boy," He hissed, ripping the magic cuff off his arm, the second he caught the green cloud smog out the window. Sparking with magic. Brimming with it. Good. He'd been hoping the Heroes would assume they had till sundown or midnight, one of the more poetic times to cast a curse. Thankfully, they'd fallen right into the cliche. Done. Victory was Peter's. He couldn't wait to give Felix the play-by-play.

"Down boy," He's hissed, ripping off the magic cuff and sending Rumplestiltskin flying across the room. He'd stepped over to hover by his son's body, the curse rippling towards him. "It's a rookie mistake, son, to think you have more time than you do. It's too late."

The windows shattered, shards of glass spun around the room. Despite the cuts and scrapes it imprinted on his skin, Peter drank it like water. So it was true, what he'd been saying all those decades: _Peter Pan never failed._

 

* * *

 

 

The end of one life and the start of another. Peter wasn't entirely comfortable with the notion as memories flooded through his brain. They spun and played before him as though on a stage, a whole false life presented in sharp neat fragments:

 _Fourteen years old, lugging a trunk behind him, hunched over a thick backpack. Something caught in his throat. He saw them, standing at the end of the airport terminal. Rumplestiltskin. The two spinsters he'd left his son with two centuries before. Even Baelfire, scruffy in his early adult years, holding up a poster-board, drawn in Sharpie with boxy letters reading:_ _**PETER.** _

_He'd approached and directly addressed the tall, middle aged man. "Are you Uncle Elias?"_

" _I am." The man said stiffly. "My condolences about your father."_

_Peter had shrugged. "He was your brother."_

" _I never had the pleasure of meeting him," He said, leaning forward on his cane._

" _Believe me, it wasn't a pleasure."_

_Fourteen and sitting at Sunday Dinner for the first time, sensing the tensions between family members but not yet integrated enough to know what they were. Wanting to know. Listening to Uncle Elias's mothers fuss about their opening a tailor shop, Flora talking about saturating the shop in warm shades of red and Fauna trying to make her case to let the pomeranian in the store during working hours. Disjointed and hard to explain in all their interactions - just short of happy._

_Fifteen years old, lighting up for the first time and feeling bad-ass for doing so, knowing his was missing Model U.N to make out with a girl named Marjorie Preston who smelled like Marlboro Lights and false bravery under the bleachers - but he'd have time to be back for student government and pit orchestra. Anything to keep him from working in Uncle Elias's shop._

_Fifteen and almost getting kicked out of St. Meissa's Catholic School for smoking on school grounds; getting out of it without letting Uncle Elias know because his great-aunts are still friends with Sister Merryweather._

_Sixteen and waiting in the hospital to hear about Auntie Fauna's heart-attack. Meeting a boy named Jack Dawkins in the waiting room and, because they were good at bad decisions, ended up dating him for three weeks before he found himself in the E.R again for a shattered knee when they got into a car crash speeding by the bay._

_Sixteen and trying not to enjoy the show when Neal and Uncle Elias start spitting fire at each other, when Neal ran off, and didn't come back - except for Sunday dinner with the Aunties._

_Sixteen and wishing more than anything Uncle Elias would stop hovering. That he'd understand Peter is not Neal and he can't make him be. Learning that , if they're smoking together, Uncle Elias doesn't mind if Peter smells like tobacco. Learning how to be addicted to something._

_Seventeen and trying to do it all better than everyone who came before him._

_Seventeen, going on eighteen, getting the cap and gown and registering at SBU, to stay in town, because it was the only option he could think of._

_Eighteen and moving into the dorms, sensing Uncle's trepidation as they hung up the world map along the wall. Eighteen and collapsing on his bunk after dinner, ready to do his own thing; eighteen and greeting his roommate when he walked into the room - tall and skinny, with nothing more than a backpack and a trashbag full of blankets to his name. Eighteen and feeling the world spin around when the green of his eyes met the silver of this new kid's._

 

* * *

 

 

The scenes from the past faded, swelling his brain. His headache blasting on either side of his temples. Till Peter realized he was awake and standing. He was leaning up against a counter and flipping through a magazine. Nerves pierced his stomach as he took in his surroundings. Countertops, dusty knick-knacks of all kinds. Magical artifacts buzzing with the slightest vestiges of Dust, invisible if you didn't know where to look. Wares and merchandise. And Rumplestiltskin himself. None the worse for war as he ran a rag along the same bookshelf Peter had thrown him into less than an hour before.

 _So this is how it starts,_ Peter frowned as he pretended to read. Focusing his magic on the memories, not on the words, he couldn't make out the symbols. He knew you had to string letters into words or sentences from sight. Peter Pan had never learned how. Usually magic would transcribe for him, breathe the words in his ear. Magic was so phantasmic and thin in this world, however, he didn't want to waste it.

Rumple's voice cut through the shop, still and momentary. "If you're not going to work, I can't pay you, Peter."

Snorting, because derision felt like the most natural course of action, Peter kept his eyes trained on his magazine. "I'm on lunch."

Rumple cleared his throat and...right. Curse. Different dynamics. Peter looked up from the magazine, confused by the hard lines on the older man's face.

"Um...sorry..." Feeling Rumple's gaze harden on him, the next word came out slowly, "Sir?"

Nodding, Rumple limped towards the counter and flexed an awkward hand on Peter's shoulder. Peter stiffened. He hadn't touched his son in centuries. "If it's bothering you this much, you need to attend to your own affairs, Peter. So either help me here, deal with them, or wander elsewhere. You can waste your own time, but not mine."

Blinking into the details, Peter attempted force his understanding but met a concrete wall each time. Utterly inaccessible. He'd have to dance around this one.

"I will," he said, edging a tone of petulance he'd garnered from the show of his false memories. "Don't worry about that."

"Then get on with it." He said, shuffling to the back room and thrusting a rag in Peter's hands, "I need to varnish a new chair. You take over the dusting."

The universes definitely had a very, very odd sense of humor. Rolling his eyes as he took on the rag, Peter shoddily skimmed the cloth over the countertops, flicked it at the jars. He was about to pass them, see if he could get the spindle to churn on the wheel just by flicking it with his rag, when he stopped on impulse. An odd tremoring impulse pulled and tugged on his hair, clothes, and skin, as though he were a knick-knack being dusted. On instinct, his eyes fixated on a jar.

No...no a jar...an urn.

Peter's stomach flipped. Buzzing low in the back of his mouth, he started to hum, casting a lowbrow spell to short out the security cameras. The urn sunk in his hands, cold to the touch and heavy bearing down on his arms. Turning the porcelain, he found the inscription. Jagged odd letters carved into the side. The transcription in his ear: _Fælean Fréond_. He couldn't make sense of their meaning. But what would he know? It could have been the most basic English like _Red Ball_ or _Killed Him._ He wouldn't know. If he hadn't had to continually buzz to keep his enchantment on the cameras going, he might have groaned. Instead, he twisted the top. And, there was, lying on top of a heap of cold, still ashes, a slip of paper.

A bit anticlimactic if he thought about it.

This time, the transcription made sense: _Resurrection of the Betrayed._

" _Betray_ is a bit of a strong word," Peter thought to himself, still buzzing as he conjured a small pouch that could fit in his pocket. He began to carefully pour the ashes safely inside. "But I'll take it."

 

* * *

 

 

With Felix's ashes safely in his pocket, Peter was ready to take on the world again. He was close, so close, to having it all. And he wasn't about to spend his last few hours of potential running a rag along Rumple's favorite artifacts and wares. And so, he'd gone, stepped out into the street.

While Rumple's store had looked, the same on the inside, Peter immediately found himself in new territory. Found himself staring at a line of speeding traffic, parking metres doused in shade from the way the buildings loomed overhead. Tall, multi-story stores, office buildings. Hubs of people - old and young walking with stern faces moving forward, hands in their pockets. Peter recognized a few when they passed. One or two Lost Boys were loitering in a shop window, smoking or drinking from brown paper bags. He even saw Snow White, teacher's bag sliding down her thin arms, dashing franticallyalong the sidewalk. But, for the most part, passersby were unrecognizable as their shadows.

But, the good part - the really good part, without any confusion or negativity - it was Peter's curse. He'd done it. He took the shoddy blueprints Rumplestiltskin made, jumped off Regina's tune and preferences, and made something new. Something impressive and spectacular.

The rubber on his soles scraped against the concrete as he tried not to stare at the buildings around him. Glass and brick high-risers and a skyline. Office buildings, centers, spiked out cranes and scaffolding in at least three separate places. And it was all visible from the way Main Street curved on the hill. Its shade like Dark Hollow, streaking red and clouds of fog seeping into his lungs.

Advertisements popped out, sticking in his eyes and brain; their colors and bold fonts. On a bench: KATHRYN NOLAN: ATTORNEY AT LAW. A big black sign on the corner, standing forward in a heap of construction: MCDONALD'S COMING SOON. The mixture was like oil and water. Seemed out of place. But, you have to use both if you want to make a cake, it's the other things one mixes into the water and the oil. And Peter was going to make tiers of his curse, and it'd be doubly as sweet as any cake he'd ever had, no doubt.

Muscle memory took him away from downtown. He strolled, mindlessly, up the lane from where the residential zones began, till he reached a literal brick wall. It was poised around the corner, marked by a fanciful academic font reading: _Storybrooke University._ The crest below mixed a spinning wheel, a straw doll, and a bronze apple. Peter frowned at the sight of it.

"'S a bit on the nose," He'd mumbled to himself, unaware of the girl in overalls passing by at that exact moment till she spoke up.

"Were you talkin' to me, _hombre?"_

Peter stiffened. Right. He'd become so used to making comments, to having Felix there to hear them, he might have forgotten he was - painfully, alone. At least for a little while longer. The ashes felt heavy in his pocket. "No. I...remembered something?"

"Right." She said, passing him by with a distance too wide to be unintentional.

Peter growled and let the cursed part of his mind take over. At least long enough to find his residence hall, to climb up the three flights of stairs and slide into Room 311 without incident.

He flipped the lightswitch and the room shuttered to visibility. The walls adorned in posters and pennants, the world map from his false memory. The desks were cluttered under books and computers and a small keyboard piano. The bunk beds were stacked dangerously close to one another. There was a guitar case against the wall, a jacket boating **BANNING** scripted across the back in bold white letters draped over a futon.

So this was it, was it? _Home sweet home._ Nothing to be impressed about, unless you were to actually consider the lengths Peter had gone through to get his curse like this. It would be a fine place to live. Would be. There was just one thing he had to do first.

Sitting, slowly, as though he were being watched, on the futon, Peter reached into his pocket again. The scrap of paper had wadded up in his pocket. Smoothing the edges, he let his eyes faze over the words. Resurrection of the Betrayed. No point delaying it. No reason to remind himself what loneliness felt like.

Fingers dancing around the drawstring, Peter withdrew the pouch from his pocket. Felix was in there, the remainder of him, and it was high time to bring him back. Nobody had looked at him in admiration yet the whole day - something he readily classified as annoying. What was the point in casting a dark curse if nobody would know you'd done it? Peter could not, for the life of him, understand.

A do-over? Probably. She'd said, just before ripping Henry's heart out of his chest, saying she hadn't regretted any of it. But women talk a big game. Taking words at face value could be dangerous.

But it wasn't as though any of that mattered anymore. Pan won. He cast his own curse, and it was time to cash in on his own promise, time to find his friend again. Solitude was no fun when it was the only option, after all.

Turning the bag upside down, Peter let the contents collect in a heap on the floor. Hard to believe Felix could arise from the ash- grey, colorless, uninspired. Someone so steadfast and impressionable, from a pile of ashes. He reached into his pocket again for his knife. Flicking it open and brandishing it, he took a step towards the ash.

Hard to believe, yes, but he had to. What would Peter Pan be if he didn't believe in impossible things?

 

* * *

 

 

Shards of dust and some foul cloud of black magic shifted from one end of space to the other, dancing to the ground, settled and at peace by Felix's feet. The chaos vanished before it could belie the sting of consciousness in Felix's chest.

His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, unable for form sounds to form words or words to form sentences or sentences from the scrambling thoughts. But he needed something to ground himself. Something independent of panic at the air filling his lungs, the blood pumping through his body.

Perhaps he was about to start a new life as a spectre. The idea popped the moment it surfaced in his mind. He was breathing, there was an unsettling prickle of cold in the tips of his toes. He could feel the hunger pangs deep in his gut. Ghosts couldn't _feel,_ could they?

So it would seem Felix was alive. Alive and well and able to command his own eyes and breath. There was a novelty in his sudden joy at the realization. The premiere of _feeling_ sunk into his gut like a flask of dreamshade nectar. How long since he had last felt anything? Anything other than curdling shame of those last moments fresh in his brain, crisp and clear as the first time he lived through them.

Somebody cleared a throat. Felix spun around, feet clumsily clicking on the concrete floor, to face the addresser. When he did, the contents of his stomach threatened to boil over. Peter Pan stood, elegant, in front of him. He swayed from one side to the other, clutching his right hand in his left. A line of blood flowing through the synapses between his fingers. Red splattered to the floor from Peter's elbow. Felix swallowed, memory flooding back.

 _Right._ Pan killed him. Felix had been dead.

He'd been dead because Pan had been in Henry's body and ripped Felix's heart from his chest. But there he stood. Back in the right face, handsome and lean, bleeding young, vibrant, eighteen-year-old blood.

It took a moment for him to realize Pan wasn't looking at him. Instead, he gazed at his own hand with a surgeon's detail and an artist's appreciation. The stream of blood trickled down his forearm. His head tilted from one side to the other.

"This should make for quite the poetic scar, shouldn't it?" Pan grinned, empty of joy but swelling in grandeur at the junction of his lips. "I'll keep it."

He waved his left hand over his right and the blood cleaned itself of his flesh and from the ground under his shoes. The floor desaturated, pristine as a supper plate. Pan's skin was smooth and perfect as the day Felix first met him, opening and closing his fist through steepling fingers. It was almost as if he was beckoning Felix closer. Holding a hand out, Felix braced himself. He took a step and waited. Nothing happened. No spell or force field to knock him backwards. The only affront in sight was the garish dark scar cut clear across Pan's hand, grinning at him from thumb to pinky finger.

Pan's face drooped when he brought his hand back towards himself. With all the pompous grandeur of a spoiled prince, demand clipped his consonants. "Death didn't leave you without a tongue, did it?"

The uncertainty in Pan's voice was rare as snow in July and just as unwelcome. Felix could barely cough through his "It didn't," and, when Pan nodded him on, he asked, without thinking, "Did you win?"

A hissing, deep in his brain, recoiled at his own priorities.

The phrase built itself on his tongue. It formed in his mouth, ready and damn near conditioned between his teeth. Immediate obedience; there he was, asking what felt expected, what felt predictable. Painting a landscape where his priorities were just the same as his last twilit evening in the forest.

Pan straightened his back and sauntered around the room. Judging only by the way he looked and the way he walked, confident and magnetic in his strides. It was no wonder Pan was the sort of boy who managed to lift the dead. "Exactly that."

At the admission, relief and rage blew through Felix, contradictory and swirling in tandem. He couldn't sow a grain of sense from it. Pan won. Of course he did; he was Peter Pan and therefore he won. There was no other option.

Even if it meant killing him.

Peter _killed_ him.

Felix had watched Pan rip his heart out. Pan had watched through young brown eyes and a blank expression on Henry's face. Felix had gasped for shaky breath after shaky breath and he'd let those chubby fingers squeeze the life from him.

Pan had said he loved Felix the most, and he'd had to start a new curse. Where had Felix gone so wrong that Peter wouldn't have given him a preface - hadn't told him his plan? If Pan had been angry with him, surely he wouldn't have still been the thing Peter Pan had loved most?

And then Pan brought him back to life and was trying to...was trying to _chat._

Felix took a breath. Might as well oblige. "What happened?"

Pan only stared at him, brow lowered and frown slapped across his face. "I cursed the town…"

"I meant with me."

"Oh...I'd have thought that was a bit obvious," Pan shrugged. "I brought you back."

"I meant _why?"_

"Feel free to blink away the dust any time now," Pan waved a scarred hand to showcase his own flippant irritability. "I made a promise, didn't I?"

Felix nodded. He remembered.

" _This spell is going to give us everything we've ever wanted."_

" _And, Felix,_ _we_ _will be in charge."_

" _When we're done with it, it's going to be the New Neverland."_

Felix almost growled at the cruel memory. Cruel because the same damn flicker of hope snapped in his gut. Just from remembering, he was pathetic and hopeful and warm all over. Not only in hope, but solidarity. Solidarity and brotherhood and pure unbridled joy.

"And then you killed me," Felix said, taking care to breathe his voice to steadiness.

"That's just _details_ ," Pan stepped closer. "You should know better than anyone I always keep my promises."

Yes, but it wasn't the point. The point was Pan had turned everything Felix had ever wanted against him. He'd used it as bait. The promise of a new beginning. Friends who wouldn't turn against him. Freedom and youth and the ability to stand on top of a tall hill next to the most extraordinary boy who ever lived.

Why had he killed him like that? _Why_ hadn't he waited a moment - _only a moment -_ when Felix had protested? Wasn't _that_ what friends did?

"How are your legs?" Peter asked, sudden and abrupt as though they'd finished the conversation. Felix could take a hint. "Are you fit to take the top bunk?"

 _Fit._ The word curdled in Felix's ears. Sour and nasty, as though he couldn't take care of himself. As though he was back to Square One and had to prove himself all over again.

Perhaps Felix's teeth bared. Peter stopped in his tracks and, with a bored sort of continence, amended. "We'll have to move the top bed upwards if you're sleeping in the bottom. They'll be no room for your head when you sit."

"I'll manage."

 

* * *

 

 

"You know you don't need to use _candles_ here." Pan bent down to rummage through his dresser, t-shirt flung over his shoulder, till he found a pair of soft plaid trousers.

Felix stuck a frown on his face and considered the spectacle half-heartedly. Peter Pan had done so many spectacular things, and there he was searching for clothes. How on earth could Pan manage to be so blase about this? Words were cheap but didn't anything - particularly his deception in murder - warrant a conversation? Why were they talking about _candles?_

Stiffly, Felix replied, "I prefer them."

"Suit yourself." Pan said amiably, fingers twisting and pulling at buttons lining his chest to tug it down his frame. Felix had to remind himself to look away and focus on the flame.

They didn't have a candlestick, so Felix used a small glass, smashed colorful clay at the bottom and let the taper sit. He'd set it aglow when the sun went down. Despite the electricity at his fingertips, this was something familiar. Even if it was fire - untamable, wild, _vital, requisite,_ destructive, final. It was light. It was familiarity and something to ground him as his world became more and more helter-skelter.

He dragged his finger along the warm bumps on the wax. The drippings hardened before they could free themselves from the body. Bumps destined to become a malformed tumor on the candle, till its next chance to bolt. Felix could hear Pan shuffling and changing behind him.

Pan. Felix had to swallow down the urge to rip out his hair by the lock. He couldn't make sense of it. Pan had _killed_ him. Smiled, tore out his heart, and crushed it into dust. He probably walked over his dead body. Probably sauntered around town bragging and boasting about his victory; just the sort of thing Peter Pan would do.

But then he brought Felix back. He took a moment from his forever to do the impossible and then expected Felix to go on like nothing had changed. The worst part, Felix thought grimly, was he'd done just that. He still didn't have any information. He hadn't even asked beyond _Why_ but, why Pan bothered to bring him back was not the important question anymore. Other things took precedent. Selfish things like, ' _Why did you kill me like you did? Wasn't there another option? Did you really need to cast the curse?_ And more efficient things like, ' _How did you bring me back? How will we move forward from here?_

Felix thrust a finger into the tall line of gold flame. He set about wavering it around only to feel the first pinch of burn before he flinched away and circled it round the bauble of light. It was nice to have pain from the candle - unquestionably real and not muddled by confusion or thoughts. The details charted out nicely, plainly, prettily:

 _Who?_ Felix.

 _What?_ Causing himself pain.

 _When?_ Now, immediately.

 _Where?_ Here.

 _Why?_ Because he needed to feel something that made sense.

 _How?_ By putting his hand in a flame.

Things usually didn't make so much sense. Perhaps listing it out would be an easy way to figure out the particulars. One of the Boys had come to the island, a saying frequently on his lips proclaiming "The Devil's in the details." Despite the sound of it, despite the teasing it'd earned him, once it was put to practice, it worked. Especially when the big picture was being so damn elusive.

Felix thought he'd give it a go, just to try it on.

 

 _Who?_ Peter.

 _What?_ Crushed Felix's heart to dust.

 _When?_ Seemingly ten minutes earlier, probably months.

 _Where?_ At the well in the heart of the forest.

 _Why?_ ~~Because Felix was the thing Peter loved most.~~ Because he needed his heart to start a curse.

 _How?_ By crushing his heart in Henry's small fist.

 

Clear. The bubbling and boiling in Felix's stomach was about to start up again and so he had to extinguish it. There'd be no point in lashing out at Pan. Others, maybe. But Pan cast his curse: this was as much of Pan's world as Neverland had been. Felix had to get a hold of his emotions. Because, frankly, he couldn't afford to die again. The second time, Pan might not bring him back. Or he would just to kill him again. It was always a vicious cycle, especially when Pan was playing vague. Times like those were the times Felix knew he had to obey his own cardinal law: I _f you're not with Pan, you're against him._

You never wanted to be against him.

He'd try again. Dipping two fingers into the flame, watching the smoke build and the flame curl around the pad of his finger till the sting sharpened and he withdrew. He traced the shape, the yellow teardrop flickering on a wick, and resumed his thought.

 

 _Who?_ Peter Pan.

 _What?_ Brought Felix back.

 _When?_ A few hours before.

 _Where?_ In Storybrooke. In their dorm room.

 _Why?_ Because Pan promised they'd rule together. Because Pan always keeps his promises.

_How?  ..._

 

Hadn't Pan told him? Wouldn't he have? What had it taken to defy the laws of magic? Maybe, Felix thought, if he knew, maybe it would calm him. When it came to choice, Felix wasn't even sure which ones he had. The implication was that he'd stand beside Pan. That he'd get everything he'd ever wanted, in charge and ruling and free without an hourglass glowing in his periphery.

The same implication as the day he died.

A fragment in Felix's chest protested. As if knowing the details would change any of the facts. Pan betrayed him. Pan loved him. Pan killed him. Pan killed him and expected nothing at all to change.

A shard in Felix's lung countered the protest in his mind. Pan was his friend. Pan told him things he told nobody else. There didn't have to be a power struggle between them because they always held their own. But those times were always games. Nothing quite so serious. Usually.

Peter gave him power. Peter gave him friendship. Peter gave him a grave.

Peter dangled happiness in front of his face and slapped it away in one moment. He lied to him, concealed information, and stripped him of all free will he had in the matter.

But Peter brought him back. Probably just on a whim or a fancy.

Damn it, why hadn't Pan had an exit strategy? Why hadn't he tried to get back _home_ or some place better? Why didn't he want to go to some other where he didn't have to kill Felix to get what he wanted? Why hadn't he just told Felix what he was thinking - the whole truth, and let him come to an honorable end? Instead Pan hid his thoughts and reduced Felix's last moments to begging for mercy. Felix, the strategist, Lost Boy, commander, lieutenant, centuries of skill in war and games, Lost Boy to the heart and soul. And he'd wasted his last moments begging and pleading and not even thinking about running away or fighting it through. When faced with fight or flight or freeze, he'd chosen the most pathetic one.

"If you think any harder you might just burn the dormitory to the ground." Peter shattered Felix's careful thoughts like a glitzing diamond through a dirty glass window. He pulled his brows low on his face and flung himself onto the adjacent bed. A sliver of skin peeked out on his abdomen between the t-shirt and elastic waistband, a thin trail of hairs in the center. "What's on your mind?"

"Why did you do it?" Felix whispered. Maybe he half hoped Peter wouldn't hear it. Maybe he couldn't get any more air in his lungs.

Pan pressed his lips together, eyes narrowing. "Didn't I already tell-"

"No. Why did you kill me _like that?"_

"It was the only way to start the curse." Peter moved forwards to balance his elbows on his knees, sitting up on the bed. "I was on a timetable."

Felix narrowed his eyes, the only practiced form of defiance he'd developed over the centuries. "So you deceived me into thinking we'd rule?"

Peter blinked, eyelashes beating against one another, halfway towards _batting_. "No deception whatsoever. You're here, aren't you?"

Felix had a headache. Why was Pan giving him the runaround? He couldn't help the growl from escaping from his throat. "You killed me. Why didn't you tell me it was your only option?"

"Are you saying, if I _asked nicely,"_ Pan's snicker was pure venom. "You would've just handed over your heart?"

"Yes." Felix narrowed his eyes. "You didn't trust me."

"It's not because of trust."

"No?" Felix's voice raised, contempt ready on his tongue but just nudging the line. The tone similar to how he'd handled new Lost Ones, the Natives, or the Pirates but not emboldened enough to bring it against Pan at full capacity.

"I wouldn't've been able to bring you back otherwise."

Pure emotion spun through his body. Up in the air like a tidal wave. Fight or flight or

_Freeze._

"What?"

"The resurrection spell." Thumbs shot out from where they rested on his knees. His shoulders twitched but so unlike a tiger about to pounce. A twist in his face. The same expression he'd worn the day he told Felix about Rumple, the hourglass, and about Malcolm. "It needed your ashes. Some magic. And the blood of the person who wronged you most."

Felix let his mouth hang. "What?"

"If I told you, you would've been gone for good."

Felix's tongue scraped against the roof of his mouth, rough as sandpaper. Fists curling and uncurling where he sat, he broke away from Peter's steady gaze. Eye contact wouldn't help anything.

Of course there had been a grander scheme to it. Simply casting a curse was so banal, so boring an anticlimax. Pan would have had something else in mind. Felix hadn't caught on. Felix hadn't realized Pan was acting for the greater good and it wasn't his time to cross Styx.

Felix hadn't trusted Pan to know what he was doing. Felix had protested and screamed; a scared little boy bereft of any fragment of the lieutenant Pan had been implicitly asking for. Felix swallowed the great lump in his throat.

" _Only one person has always believed in Pan,"_ Peter had said. A lie. In those last few moments, Felix hadn't. He was sure his shame was apparent on his face, a taut distress in his brow, the shaking in his eyes. Why couldn't he have trusted Pan the way…

Hang on.

Pan hadn't trusted _him._ Pan took it upon itself to uproot Felix's autonomy, hoisted up the burden of capital offense and ripped his heart out. Pan didn't even bother to ask him what things people had done before. After so many years of Pan giving him hints to piece it together, of Pan telling him everything upfront, Felix didn't know what to make of darkness. It was a tool Pan hadn't needed to use.

Didn't Pan think Felix would have been honest if he just _told_ him?

Felix cleared his throat. "Do you trust me so little that you think I wouldn't tell you exactly who wronged me most?"

"You're over two hundred years old, am I wrong in assuming they'd all be dead?"

"Yes."

 _"Yes?"_ Pan's eyes narrowed, visually dragging any and all information he had till something fit. "Well, I could hardly bleed all the Lost Boys for you. It'd take too long."

"Not them. Hook."

"What has he done to you?" _Hook?_ Peter's eyes danced up and down Felix, wondering what the pirate could have done to him.

Felix growled. He stood up abruptly, defensive without warrant. All he said was "Rufio."

_Oh._

"...Right. How...fitting." Pan's flower melted away as his thoughts took an abrupt turn. He snickered low, let his head slide from one side to the other. "I suppose slitting our dear captain's throat over your ashes would have been a fitting welcome back present."

When Felix returned the laugh, they were themselves again. The best of friends, laughing together, agreeably, amiably. For the first time in a long time, Pan and Felix made sense again.

Thoughts, memories, realizations flooded in. The image of water bursting through a concrete dam. Understanding, information; back on top. And Pan offered it to him while he was being petulant, rude, and the brand of childish that didn't make anything better.

He sucked in his breath and gave a small nod and looked down at his own hands, unsure if he could muster the audacity to look Peter in the eye. "As always, I was mistaken not to assume the best of you."

Peter's breath was sharp in the vibrato, a rare uncalculated twitch in the spine. The look Pan got when anything was edging out of his design.

Why? Had Felix's apology not been sincere?

"Er, well." Peter straightened his back and slapped on a self-satisfied expression. "It's expected, that you'd have questions.

"But do have some faith," Peter began again. "Remember, Peter Pan never fails."

At the familiar mantra, Felix quirked a grin. The fragments of uncertainty settled and the new pushed to the side for the sake of the old, he could still manage to have a say. So, he said, quiet in voice. "Banning."

"Hm?"

"You're Peter Banning now," Felix said, the details of the curse immediately at his disposal. Something built-in to catch inconsistency.

Peter scrunched his nose. His face was childish and petulant and amusing beyond belief. With a familiar grin, he shrugged, " _Peter Banning never fails._ Doesn't quite have the same ring."


	2. Chapter 2

_Felix Antony is six years old, sitting in the hallway, under all the handprint turkey paintings. Mother sits in Miss Honey's classroom. He's listening to the teacher talk about how his learning is going well, but how he never wants to go out at recess. How quiet he is, how he could sometimes lash out at the other kids without warning and, was everything okay at home?_

_Ten years old, to the day, when his stepfather hits him the first time. The biggest irony of which is that everyone assumed he's been getting into fights on the baseball diamond (and he has) so the bruises go unnoticed._

_Twelve, and he can transfer to St. Meissa. But he doesn't have any friends who go there so he botches the entrance exam. He's expected to do things other than just play outside. Get involved. Too skinny for the public school's wrestling team, the only thing that really stuck were textbooks and extra assignments._

_Fourteen and kissing the boy who's supposed to be tutoring him for Spanish 200. He'll break Felix's heart two weeks later. But for now they're scared and excited. Their fingers are intertwined, pressed up against walls of clothes hung up. Trying to breathe from the suffocating air that comes from, literally, kissing inside a closet._

_Sixteen, Felix getting his driver's licence. He's reduced his time at home to next to nothing. And that's a good thing. He's thought about hitting his stepfather back sometime. But their health insurance doesn't cover hospital visits for kids like him._

_Seventeen and, suddenly, living with his friends. Sleeping on their couches and their floors, staying over, going to games and events. Understanding why they're so important. Deciding to consider them family and forget the rest._

_Eighteen, taking a year off to work at Granny's Diner and Hotel. Bussing tables and making beds, two part time jobs to make a full time. Single-minded and goal-oriented. It's betrayal when he quits in order to focus on grades at Storybrooke University - scholarships don't, after all, stay for people who spread themselves thin._

_Nineteen, meeting his roommate for the first time. Deciding on the spot that Peter Banning was not only the biggest spoiled brat on the face of the planet. But a whole hell of a lot of something else too._

 

* * *

 

 

Felix woke, suddenly, with a throbbing in his temple. Nineteen years of false memories looped in his brain, ingrained, overnight. And, when he sat up, it looked like his memory wasn't the only thing affected by the curse. The room had changed. Peter's desk, the one with the jacket draped off the chair; the chaos on the desk beside it had subsided into a small pile of choice items. Approaching, Felix leaned over to see a photograph of himself staring out at him on his own I.D card. _Felix Antony, Student._ A small brass key for the dorm. A wallet with his debit card, driver's license and about $3 in cash. A cell phone - already full of contacts and histories.

Felix blinked around the room. A bulletin board over Felix's bunk, another computer, a second hamper. Overnight, Pan had injected him into the curse as flawlessly as if he'd been there to begin with. Stunning, really. Absolutely stunning.

From curiosity on the Lost Boy's part, and habit on the cursed boy's, he selected the green icon on his phone boasting a speech bubble. Light spilled out of the device. Felix felt his own eyes widening as the logs stared back at him - fragments of conversations he didn't remember. Though he had vague recollections of the mood and receiving the messages it was as fragmented and aloof as an excerpt from a dream.

Names stared back at him. Stark black print against the bright white, reading:

> **ruby.**
> 
> _Sent at 11:30pm, yesterday._
> 
> Just give it time but hmu if you need to bitch…
> 
> **tod.**
> 
> _Sent at 9:26pm, yesterday._
> 
> so we got a keg already but if you wanted to brin...
> 
> **BOT 320 Group**
> 
> _Sent at 5:00pm, yesterday._
> 
> GREENHOUSE B 2MORROW DON'T FORGET :)
> 
> **Peter.**
> 
> _Sent 11:49pm, Thursday_
> 
> Whatever.
> 
> **ed.**
> 
> _Sent 4:30pm, Tuesday_
> 
> U leave lolcats out of this

If he wanted, he could probably bring the memories to the surface. Understand the context of each message. But he'd rather not analyze and get caught in this false reality. Whatever any of these logs were about, they couldn't have been as important as the places and people and adventures he'd kept so close for so long. He'd ruminate over Neverland and nothing else.

Returning the phone to the desk, he began to look around the room. A solid concrete block cell they'd tried to cheer up with posters and pennants. At least it had a window, through the window wouldn't be enough. He'd gotten himself used to living outside, breathing with the bursts of air, open and part of it all. It felt like an amputation to live inside the face of four walls. But, just like anything, he could get used to it. He had the rest of forever, after all, to get used to it.

Snatching him from reverie, Peter groaned, and tossed a blanket over his shoulder. Felix had to choke back a laugh as he heard Peter sit up on the creaking bed and yawn. _Peter Pan_ actually _yawned._ Felix busied himself with shifting his student I.D into the wallet to hide his snicker.

"How long have you been up?" Peter asked. He moved distractedly, stretching to his feet and literally _hopping_ into a pair of slippers.

"Not long."

"I thought we'd walk today," He let his words bringing him to full awareness. Till he was awake enough to appreciate the artistry in his speeches. "Get used to the curse. See how you can waltz into any conversation with our friends if you like."

"Friends." Felix spat, voice full of content.

The Lost Boys, the ones who betrayed Pan, the ones who betrayed Felix, the ones who didn't even deserve their memories of Neverland. He turned around to speak to Pan around the same time Pan reached behind his neck to whip the t-shirt over his head. Felix blinked away, lest he end up fixating on Peter's lean muscles and chest.

Refocusing out the window, Felix couldn't help but notice the glinting of the harbor. It glimmered beyond the lay of roads and buildings and trees, looking for all the world just like Cannibal Cove. At least it would have. But the spikes and lifts from skyscrapers and high-rises not loomed over the canopies.

Felix sat up a little straighter, turning to rummage through his own closet space. Among at least a half dozen pairs of blew denims, two black, one purple, were countless shirts. Picking a plain grey V-neck, he turned to Peter.

"What next?"

Peter grinned, a picture of nonchalance. "I figured we'd get breakfast. Then see the sights."

Good a plan as any. Considering the chilled branches wracking in the spring breeze, Felix turned to the closet and added a warm looking leather jacket to the mix. Turning around, he spun into Felix's gaze. The way Peter looked at him then, a quirk in his lip, made him feel naked. Pulling on his layers, Felix shifted from one food to the other. "What?"

"Bad-arse." Peter blinked and murmured, before turning back as though the exchange hadn't happened at all. "Anyway, shall we go?"

 

* * *

 

 

"Hey! Glad to see you guys back and...together. Can I start you with coffee?" A stark voice sounded the minute they'd taken their seat in the restaurant portion of Granny's. Felix turned his head to see a tall woman tagged as **RUBY**. She had a half-full carafe in her hands and, when Peter nodded, produced two mugs from a tray. Felix watched her pour with semi-adversarial interest. He hadn't made an opinion on it before she'd reached into the pouch on her hips, "It's black for Peter and two creams plus sugar for Felix, right?"

"Yes," Peter said. Felix didn't know if he had memories to second this or if he was just rolling with the punches.

When she was done, Ruby turned towards them. "Did you know what you wanted or do you need a minute?"

"The usual," Peter said, award-winning smile plastered on his face. The kind of smile that just knocked Felix out. It made everything about Peter, from the pockmark between his eyes to the concave V in his two front teeth, the most gorgeous things in the world.

"You got it," Ruby returned a re-painted grin, tipping to genuine and winked so fast he almost missed it. She left in the next beat, off to the kitchen, and he couldn't be sure any of it was real.

Mixing the tiny cups of cream and packets of sugar into his drink, Felix turned his gaze back out the window. Peter fanned out the _Storybrooke Daily Mirror_ on the table. His eyes bouncing from article to article as though nothing could hold his attention for more than five seconds. As if he wasn't actually reading. Felix pulled on his sleeves, unused to the fuzzy inner lining, unused to the scratch of tags against his skin. Unused to "If I'm uncomfortable, I can change later" as an option.

"We have a usual?" Felix asked, surprising himself in his effort to fill the silence.

Peter looked up from the paper. "Apparently so. Impressive, isn't it?"

Felix grinned and brought his coffee to his lips, basking in the brilliance of his friend. Only Peter Pan could take a spell that had taken Rumplestiltskin centuries of hard work, and modify it with such spectacular ease. Only Peter would go the extra mile, and make it good enough to become something worth all its time and investment.

"Don't give me a standing ovation or anything," Peter's voice broke the barrier of Felix's thoughts. He held his cup in testy palms, brow raised in expectancy.

He coughed.

"It's impressive, Peter. Really."

Peter pressed his tongue against the inside wall of his cheek and all he managed to muster was "Hm."

Great people required a great amount of attention. An exhaustive amount.

Ruby returned just then with two large plates on her tray. She put down a set of scrambled eggs, bacon, and a soft fluffy biscuit in front of Peter. Before Felix: an omelette, leaking cheese and ham, with sausage and a bagel on the side. She refilled their cups, but the breakfast rush was bustling. It looked like she wanted to chat, she was pulled away by some portly man asking for a refill on his cappuccino.

Wordlessly, the two boys dug in. On Neverland, they only ate wild game and vegetables. Every once in a while, they'd steal food from the Jolly Roger. When the magic grew scarce, and they couldn't believe food into existence anymore, it was the only option. So an actual recipe was uncommon. Flavors that played with each other and mixed to create the new sensation, uncommon and good as sin. Too good to be approved of by the gods for anyone but themselves.

Redirecting his gaze out the window, Felix watched with mild interest. The buzzing array of mothers and fathers and nannies huddled next to shop windows. The mobs of children running along the sidewalk. It would've been peculiar to Felix, if not for the false memories. This was normal, and he knew what would happen next. The yellow school bus rumbled up to the curb and screeched to a halt. It would have been unremarkable, kids queuing up for a long day of school in their coats and hats. But then he saw a very familiar red-and-grey striped scarf wrapped around a very familiar face.

" _Peter,"_ Felix breathed, not taking his eyes off the kid for a second.

"What?"

"Look." Felix nodded out the window. He broke his eyes from the window to watch Peter search, eyes growing when they reached their target. "Henry?"

"You didn't... _sort_ him?"

Blinking, Peter turned back to Felix, "Sort him?"

"He's the Truest Believer," Felix reasoned, tightening his fists on the table. "Isn't he a likely candidate to break the curse?"

Peter snorted. "Break by True Love's Kiss? From whom? Emma isn't the savior anymore. She doesn't even know who Henry is. No one's _destined_ to break it. They'd have to put in the effort. And since they're cursed, they won't."

"If somehow they start waking up?"

"You still know how to break a femur with your bare hands don't you?"

Felix snickered, nodded, and turned back to the window just in time to catch the bus driving away.

Peter's voice soothed its way to his ears with a contemplative "I wonder…"

"Wonder what?"

"What would happen if I were to start the clock on him for a little while. Till he's, say, seventeen, eighteen. Put him up in an empty dormitory with the rest of us."

"Why?" Felix straightened his back, overager beads of sweat collecting on his shoulder blades.. "You aren't still dying are you?"

Peter chuckled, drumming his fingers on the table. "No, I'm not."

"Then why?"

"When you want something for hundreds of years, you don't just stop." Peter said, brushing it off.

"I know."

"Do you?"

For some insane reason Felix could not pin down, his heart stopped in his chest. Sweat collected in his palms, heat surged in his stomach. No words aided description, so he ignored it, nodded, and resumed his breakfast.

"So, what's next?" Felix placed his fork down on the table.

"Just give your debit card to Ruby up front and meet me outside." He pulled out a small paper box with red and white markings from his pocket. "I've got something I have to take care of."

"What is it?"

Peter took a moment to deliberate. Raising his eyes to the sky as though he were drawing on any poetic muses clinging to the ceiling, he said, "One hell of a nasty habit."

Passing by, he put a hand on Felix's shoulder. With the contact, Felix flooded with memories. Thumbing up cigarettes. Picking strings of cottonmouth mucus out from his teeth when the chemicals didn't agree with him. Blowing smoke into a faceless boy's mouth.

The shock of the last image jolted him to his feet.

He kept his eyes on Peter as he meandered over to the front counter. Watching as he pushed his way through he doors. The bells over the door chimed behind him. Felix looked away after Peter had the stick between his teeth, raising a green Zippo up to his lips. Once he did, Ruby waved to him slowly, noticing his averted attention. "Hey, Tall Guy. What's up?"

Felix held up his debit card. He had enough context from the cursed memories to know to say, "Paying."

Ruby nodded and slid the card through the machine. She was intent to her job until the next sound cue: the chimes above the doors. The suggestion of music impeded by the clank of heels against the tiles and the gruff accented "Hey" following.

Although he was certain the greeting wasn't for him, Felix turned around to see a woman who looked...familiar. Not only to Felix Antony, but to the Lost One. She was wearing something low-cut and blousy but that didn't help him identify her as she came closer and closer with every pace.

"Hey," Ruby called. She planted the heels of her palm into the counter and lifted herself over to greet the woman in a more intimate way.

No sooner had their lips brushed together, than Granny's voice snapped from the kitchen space. A blurting "Ruby, you're on the clock" and a groan from both the women.

Ruby turned to the register and handed Felix his card. The familiar woman flicked a piece of hair from her face, till she found enough cause to turn to the side and make eye contact with Felix. She looked at him with confused disdain, and then, it _clicked_. She was, once upon a time, Rumple's lady-love. The shadow had transformed into her to fool Rumplestiltskin.

Apparently, Felix had been staring too long in his attempt to place her. She hopped onto a stool, with one between them, with a curt, "D'you wanna take a picture or something?"

Felix ignored the outward disdain. "No. You look...familiar."

She crinkled her nose. "Well, I've known ya for like five years. So...real shocker there."

" _Lacey,_ be nice," Ruby cautioned, loading up the coffee maker without prompt. She must have memorized... _Lacey's_ order. Lowering her voice, as though Felix weren't still a point in the triangle between them, she said, "You know they've been fighting."

Slurping her drink and hissing at the heat, Lacey held up her free hand. "Oh, God, what a catastrophe. He has to pay while his boyfriend smokes outside."

"My _what?"_

Both Ruby and Lacey snapped their heads to him. Ruby bunched her fist in her rag. Lacey's jaw dropped. From Ruby: "Oh my God. What happened? Are you okay?"

No sooner had Ruby punctuated the question than Felix started coughing. _Boyfriend._ From what Felix could gather, boyfriends came from dating and dating was this Land Without Magic's analog to courtship. Only even more stupid because there was nothing to gain from it. Courtship was stupid because it was just the adult world's precursor to a business transaction to bind two families together. Dating was stupid because it wasn't practical. It was like playing pretend at adulthood, and who the hell would want to?

But, more importantly, what did this mean in terms of Peter's curse? He was living in the curse of Peter's design, but these details didn't make sense. Messing with romances, putting others under the impression...it didn't make sense.

Felix shook it from his mind and couldn't help but blurt, "I'm fine."

"I dunno what you've been fightin' about," Lacey said, with a tight roll to her eyes, "But, gotta tell you, it's probably his fault."

"Yeah," Ruby agreed. "Don't pay for his peace-breakfast. He should pay for _your_ peace-breakfast."

"We…" Felix faded, discomfort searing him with the incandescent lights up above, "Don't fight."

The coffee had finished brewing, but Ruby wasn't reaching for the styrofoam cups. "Felix. We're concerned."

"Don't be." Felix replied, wanting nothing more than to run back home. He had questions, a million questions, that only Peter could answer. This didn't align with their blueprints, with the descriptions or ideas. It felt like a lie by omission no matter how hard he tried to bully the thought into submission. It never did any good to think about the things Peter made him _feel_ anyway. He paused, "Coffee's done."

"If you need anything…." Ruby began, reaching for the cups, "Don't be a stranger. Okay?"

"Sure." Felix said, abrupt, unable to tell why he was suddenly so nervous in front of these women. Turning about, he bolted out of the door, debit card in hand.

 

* * *

 

 

Whenever Felix was bothered, he'd burst in on heavy footsteps. His sour expression dangerous. Clearly ready to hit anyone like a - what was the expression? - freight train? For someone who liked to keep so much to himself, Felix was devastatingly transparent. Peter just had to learn his tells and then - _voila_ \- all Felix's expressions and emotions were right there on his sleeve. It was so easy, Peter wondered why none of the other Lost Boys bothered to pay the fragment of attention it took to read Felix. It was so easy, so very very easy with him.

Even if he did burst out of Granny's in such a huff Peter broke his concentration from the soft silky smoke. He'd been thinking about the ways that drifted down his throat and how it tasted like victory. But upon Felix's entrance, stony and worried and all up and bothered, Peter's fingers tapped out the stick and he dropped ash on the sidewalk. It fell and scattered. Splattering on the ground in Rorschach disarray. The patterns reminiscent of battles and throats slashed so long ago Peter couldn't slice up the details. Ash, however, was grey and therefore lacked a certain artistry.

"Something important happen in there?" He asked, wagering he could get a few more drags out of the cigarette. Thus, he lifted it to his lips and let the smoke creep into the crevices where his loneliness had been. When Felix didn't reply even through his eyes were trained on him. A deliberate step forward by Peter, they began to walk, and he spoke, "Something's on your mind."

Felix looked funny, frowning while he tried to match Peter's footfalls. They moved quicker than his usual pace. Still, it was elegant in its own intricate and evasive way.

He swallowed, throat bobbing fast and frantic. "I'm...confused about the terms of your curse."

"Are you?" Peter blinked, not quite realizing he hadn't stopped staring at Felix's throat. His stomach jumped, although why on earth considering the use of one's throat made Peter jitter was a bit of a mystery. He'd solve it later. Focusing on Felix, Peter tried to make his grin pleasant - just the front of his teeth, bright eyes, heart and effort mixed in. "By what?"

"I ran into the maiden we used to trick Rumplestiltskin. She was kissing Ruby."

Peter narrowed his eyes, not in contempt, but in confusion. "Who?"

"The waitress from Granny's."

"Okay...so?" The cigarette was beyond its use, and Peter dropped it to the ground.

Felix tried (and failed) to mask his huffy breath in a contemplative one. Annoying.

He continued: "They also...implied the terms of our relationship are different than I think they are."

"I wouldn't worry about that. _"_ Peter said without pressing into thought, watching the morning's sun in the grey March sky. "People assume, people talk. Don't pay 'em-"

It had the potential to be a great speech, Peter knew it had. But it was a speech destined to never be realized. A cutting sharp 'ba-rrrring' sliced between them.

Felix jolted at the loudness thrusting from his pocket. Cursed impulses took over and he seized the phone from his pocket and pressed down on the green symbol glowing under the name TOD.

"Um...hello?"

The tinny response was on the other end had a voice loud enough Peter could make out the muffled words: "Did ya sleep in again?"

Felix's eyes flashed over to Peter but slunk away the moment they made contact. In reply, he kept things simple: "No?"

An exasperated sigh: "You forgot, didn't you?"

From further away, Peter could overhear humming of two other voices: _He forgot?_ And _Oh come on I woke up before lunch!_

True to form, Felix said nothing. Peter recognized the expression, the reluctance to admit fault. Stonier than it was ever with him. The sun was in his eyes and he looked to the ground.

From the phone: "Botany? We were all supposed to meet up in the greenhouse this morning? With Copper and Rosie? She sent out a text last night?"

Peter's ears prickled at the details. He knew Felix would have to play catch-up for a while...but the idea Felix _Antony_ had previous engagements was...annoying.

But, for some reason, when Felix turned to look at him, he shrugged.

Not getting any information from Peter's body language, Felix replied, "I'll be there."

"You better." Tod said, voice friendly, from the other end of the phone. "Or else I'll take back the invite for the party tonight."

Without any sort of lingering adieu, the line went dead. Peter watched with careful intricacy as his friend pocketed his phone and turned to him.

"I...have to meet up with a few people." He said, checking for some kind of implausibility. Stacking it against his understanding of the universe. Struggling to cram the pieces together.

"So I heard." Peter felt cold all of a sudden. The shade in March, always did horrible things to one's temperature, mixing the air with the wind and the dark.

Felix paused. "I don't have to…"

As melodic as it sounded to Peter's ego, he shook his head. Felix wasn't about to consider spending time with him obligatory. "I'm a big boy, Felix. I can handle being on my own for a few hours."

Felix's laughter was softer after he shuffled his feet against the pavement. Rather than reply with something Peter could go off, he murmured he'd meet Peter back in their room. And then bolted off in the other direction. Quick, simple, without a word.

They'd never had to have been attached at the hip. Not even on Neverland. Felix would go off on independent projects or patrols now and then. Peter would find the fun with his other friends. The curse had a way of interpreting one's previous life to fit with the red bricks and shingled roofs. And that was the rub. No problems there. It wasn't like he'd become terribly lonely or unsocialized in the few hours he'd been without his friend. It wasn't as though his imagination had reached some amazing gold standard. Not as though everything was just nudging the line of tolerability.

It wasn't.

He had a full day of time to do things, he could take his time in Storybrooke City, and appreciate and absorb it. No waiting for a Truest Believer. No hourglass. None of that. He had the freedom and the time to do...anything he wanted.

There was no point in wasting that. He'd lived without that, with the edges always imprinted into his mind, for the longest time. It was high time he let his old habit die.

Digging his hands in his pockets, he began to walk away, running a hand along shopfront windows just to streak up the glass. He set about watching parking meters tick into expiration and their owners panickedly ran to their cars. As though getting caught in the act of parking wrong would have been the worst thing that'd happened to them all day.

"Because that's really the worst fate for people Rumple could have thought of," He murmured, aloud, shaking his head. Where were these people's artistry? Their villany? For self-touted binarians, they didn't have a good grasp on the whole making others miserable thing. Peter wasn't sure how he'd engineer such a curse, himself. But it'd be better than that. Especially if his aim had been to make other people miserable. Perhaps if he wasn't so busy protecting his own body from crumbling, it would have been different. But, as it was, his priority used to be the hourglass. Not so anymore. Suspended in time, he could live forever. Everyone else was collateral.

He wasn't sure where his legs took him, him as he wandered along the sidewalks. Meandering through groups of people roaming and trails of people pushing through to a destination. Passersby in business suits and ratty jeans. Each one of them with their own destination in mind and heading off. The only thing in common was the setting.

Bored, Peter scanned the crowd for any old arbitrary person. Picking out a woman in her mid-to-late twenties who carried herself as though she didn't have any place to be, but wanted to get out of the house, he decided he xould have fun with this. Maneuvering himself on the sidewalk, he studied her gait, viewed the large outgoing swing in her arm. A moment more and he caught the edge of her phone conversation: "Yeah, but Elsa hasn't left the house in days, I'm getting worried…"

Once he was close enough to hear, he saw the gap between the open, jagged tooth lines of the zippers on her purse.

A long time ago, when Peter had been Malcolm, he'd been pretty good at this. Not _great_ , he got caught a little over half the time. But once he'd managed to pickpocket a handful of gold coins in a silk handkerchief. After pawning it away, he'd been able to eat for a week.

Carefully, he joined the crowd at the crosswalk, waited until they were all focused on the meter to slip his fingers in the gap. He didn't have enough time to rummage, but managed to grab a bottle of Aspirin.

Nothing grand, but it was nice to know he could still get things done without magic. Felix would be so impressed with him, if he were here.

 

* * *

 

Tod was the last of the group from the phone to take off his coat. Felix didn't see the problem. If anything it was comfortably warm; the jacket wouldn't change much. But the rest of the group had a different idea, or at least Tod had, asking, "Aren't you _warm,_ man?"

Felix was too focused on trying to remember any information from Felix Antony. Something he could say to come off as intelligent during the session. He poked at a Venus flytrap to watch the plant snap shut, stressing out in its lack of nourishment with the exertion. On Neverland, the temperature had been erratic and tied to Peter's mood. It was easier to wear layers and keep them on, unless Peter had made it desert-hot. In which case they'd all be suffering. But the warmth in the greenhouse felt like Neverland on the average day. He was warm, incubating in his hoodie, but it was nothing to complain about or strip for. Even if the rest of his study group seemed to think otherwise.

Rosie approached the table with a large flowering plant. "Okay," She said, none the wiser to the previous conversation. "So hybrids...looks like we have to determine the type of hybrid of different plants."

Leaning backwards in his chair, Copper snickered. "So basically our homework is a scavenger hunt?"

"Basically," Rosie said, unfolding a slip of paper from her pocket and reading it over. "Exactly, actually."

"Well that shouldn't be hard." Copper said, excited out of the blue, as though he were born to find things, to pick things out of a field and go after them. Rubbing his hands together, he laughed. "Let's go find some shit."

Tod, for his part, rolled his eyes and turned towards Felix. "That's the man I love. What a dork."

"I can _hear_ you," Copper called over his shoulder, already pouring through potted plants. He skimmed the descriptions for some sort of clue. "And I'm choosing not to comment."

"You just did," Tod returned, lips turned up, ready to go on with the banter if Copper elected. When he didn't, he tapped Felix on the shoulder. "Might as well start up, huh?"

It felt good, Felix realized after another ten minutes, to get his hands dirty. To listen to a group of people laugh and joke and talk. Frivolous things passed between them, free of the gravity or life and death. It felt good to just be, to just feel cool soil under his fingertips and be in the presence of people he could, maybe one day, learn to like.

 

* * *

 

 

While Peter's pickpocketing venture had gone well, he wasn't about to keep on tailing the woman. That wasn't his intention, he didn't want to scare her or act suspicious. Acting suspicious was the quickest way to get caught; he'd learned it at a very, very young age. And so, as they crossed the street, he made a beeline for some randomly selected shop with big windows. There. He'd intended to waltz right in all along, as though he didn't have a bottle of Aspirin jammed up his sleeve.

The shop he'd slipped into was small. There was a bigger space behind the front counter. He could only make out the conveyor belt full of clothes before he almost ran into a mannequin adorned in a tuxedo. A quick look at the window told him what he needed to know, he was in a tailor's shop.

"Can I help y-oh, Peter! Good of you to stop in!"

Spinning around, blinking at the familiarity of the voice, Peter's knees wobbled. And then, he made eye contact with one of the two old spinsters he'd left Rumple with, easily over two hundred years ago. The shorter one.

Before he knew what he was saying, his tongue wagged without himself. "You're alive."

They'd been in his memories at their introduction. But he'd assumed they'd be as dead in Storybrooke City as they were supposed to be _...in general_.

The woman with her age-withered face placed a wrinkled hand over her heart. "Now, Peter that's a bit rude. I know pneumonia is nothin' to sneeze at at my age, but I recovered just fine, But I do appreciate the flowers you all sent in, that was kind."

Peter blinked. _What._

The old woman didn't seem to think anything of his delay. She called over her shoulder, beaming, "Fauna! Peter's come to visit."

The second old hag from centuries ago, burst through the curtained back room without delay. She'd tied a pin-cushion tied on her wrist, and extended her arms to him. "Peter! How good to see you! Come back to visit us." Peter didn't know what to do or how to react when she stepped forward to wrap him in an embrace. Something they wouldn't have done to _Malcolm_ with a ten-foot-pole. "Haven't seen ya since Flora took ill. We've missed ya, lad. Have you been to see your uncle lately?"

With a quick flex in the hand, Peter seized onto the fragments of magic floating thin in the unremarkable Storybrookian air. Time held still. Two spinners frozen in place, he stepped away. He had to piece something together. They were alive. How?

"All right, let's see what we've got…" Peter mumbled to nobody in particular. Then, he plunged deep into his pseudo-memories. Into the place where everything was faded, lackluster, and every color drowned in grey.

_Peter Banning chokes himself on a tie. It's stupid. They're just going to the courthouse, it isn't even a big wedding but Uncle Elias had insisted he wear a tie. Even though it's just him, Uncle Elias, and Neal at the courthouse. Even though it'll just be them for dinner and cake and congratulations._

_Really, Peter's in it for the cake._

_They're waiting. Aunts Flora and Fauna must've gotten lost in traffic or got otherwise detained. Uncle Elias and Neal filled in the empty spaces with chatter._

_"Kinda sad they had to go civil service for this," Neal remarks, absently staring at the moulding in the front hall. "They'd wanted communion, hadn't they?"_

_Uncle Elias frowns. "I doubt they bothered to ask Mother Superior to perform."_

_To this, Peter raises his voice, "Didn't they get kicked out of the convent?"_

_Neal elbows Peter with a warning look. Uncle Elias opts not to answer, and Peter wants so badly to take it as a challenge._

_"Besides," Uncle Elias continues, "It was hard enough getting a judge to agree. Of the two in town, I think Turpin only agreed to spite Frollo."_

" _Papa..." Neal begins. "I see those wheels turning. C'mon, it's Gramma and Nana's wedding day."_

_The tone's obvious: Don't spoil it._

_Now Aunts Flora and Fauna stand in front of a sour faced judge, holding hands and fading out as Peter counts the tiles on the floor of the courtroom. So far: 106. The vows drone on and on._

Peter spat himself back to the present, the drafty tailor's shop, Flora and Fauna frozen in animated poses in front of him. The memory still hadn't answered the big question. How the hell were they still alive, two centuries after they should have long since been buried six feet under? After all, back in Misthaven they were two lonely old spinsters. They kept to themselves. Malcolm had been surprised when volunteered to take Rumple off his hands, they seemed to introverted. There was nothing odd or magical about them. Nothing at all. Not the cloth they weaved. Not the micromanaging motherliness that made them suggest Rumple traipse off to gods-knew-where with a nearly extinct magic bean…

Oh.

Well that made it somewhat obvious, didn't it?

Wincing at his own former idiocy, Peter resolved to never speak about this again. He lifted the spell. And, without realizing it, they pounced.

"You know how Elias is, he worries if he doesn't hear from ya."

"Does he?" Peter blinked, unsure where to take the conversation. It was an interesting development, he'd gotten himself stuffed into a family. He supposed this was what he got for not taking the time to read the fine print.

Fauna placed a wrinkled hand on Peter's shoulder. "He only has a funny way of showing it. But all he wants is his family. Never too late to make up with family."

"Right." Peter mumbled.

_Let's start over._

_We can make the fresh start you always wanted. Together. Just as we planned._

"Well, consider dinner. Tonight, we'll all be gettin' together." Flora said, sensing Peter's trepidation and turned the conversation to something wholly more uncomfortable. "So. Is everything going all right at school?"

"Fine."

"Peter dear," Fauna approached, wringing arthritic hands together. "Did somethin' happen? Are things better with Felix?"

"Fine." Peter felt his lungs constrict. "Why would you ask?"

The women exchanged glances. Then, after a prolonged beat of silence, Fauna continued. "'s just we don't wanna see our great-nephew brokenhearted."

"...brokenhearted?" Peter blinked. The temperature went up in the shop. He could change the atmosphere inside, given effort. But his effort was, at the time, otherwise placed. "It's fine."

It was Flora, this time, who spoke: "Peter. We know how hard it can be."

"Aye," Fauna added. "But we also know how long and empty life can seem if you deny yourself someone to care for."

Peter wasn't sure if he was getting sick or still reeling from the presence of these two women who should have been long since dead. But he didn't stop her when Flora moved to touch his face and said, "Food for thought."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's reading, giving kudos, and of course for your amazing comments. I'm such a luckout. <3 It's unreal to see your support and comments. Thank you all so much! 
> 
> _Also!_ The idea of the Spinsters being Flora and Fauna isn't something I headcanon'd on my own. I think I saw it on a Confessions blog. Either way. Can't take credit for that; that's to the amazingly collaborative community of fandom. Thanks so much to the community. 
> 
> Okay, enough of that! Onto the update!

' _We also know how long and empty life can seem if you deny yourself someone to care for.'_ Showed what they knew. Peter had himself and and he had Felix. And it was fine just the way it was. Fine. Status quo was _fine_. Felix didn't need Peter to care for him. That was partly the point. They were the two who mattered, the two who were taking the world by its teeth and making something out of it.

Despite his resolve, Peter found himself pushing through the door to their room. An annoying part of him hoping Felix was inside. He was. The kid all hunched over a notebook with a pencil scritching rapidly on the paper. His hand too fast to achieve the artistic curves and delicate lines of calligraphy. Felix turned around after Peter crossed through the threshold and his face immediately dropped.  
"What is it?" He asked, comforting in the simplicity.

Wait.

Comforting?

  
Son of a  _bitch._

Peter shook the surprise from himself. A quick reminder that comfort was not equal to care and he took a seat on the futon with a self-glorified flourish. Not wanting to be without something to do, he begun to pull of his shoes. "I had an...unexpected meet-up today."

"With whom?" Felix spun away from the desk, paper and pencil forgotten. Probably clinging to the word _unexpected._

Clearing his throat, Peter cast a quick cosmetic spell. A long looped string appeared from air to settle in his fingers, he began to loop his hands under the threads of yarn. Throwing his former resolve of secrecy to the window, he said, "Do you remember how I gave Rumple to those two old hags?"

"Yes." Felix replied, diligently. Of course he remembered. Felix remembering things was...warm.

Peter cleared his throat. "Well. They're still alive. Turns out, they've got magic of some kind."

He stopped. Not only for emphasis but to see the surprise register on Felix's face. He wanted to see him adamant to take action. To hear him ask Peter how he knew and then get swept up in the dizziness before a plan it hatched. Instead, Felix didn't even blink.

"Yes."

" _Yes?"_

Felix sat there, mouth gaping, "They conjured a magic bean out of nowhere…I assumed."

"It wasn't so obvious at the time." Peter snapped, feeling the string between his fingers go taut. Close to fraying.

Felix paused. And then, "Okay. Go on, Peter."

Maybe because he was so used to sharing information with Felix, but Peter let out a testy sight. Maybe because he had to decide what to do about it and it was better to sound it out, maybe just because he wanted to tell somebody. It didn't matter. "Well, turns out, they've got enough magic to be immortal. Was _that_ so obvious?"

"Peter, I-"

"Doesn't matter," Peter muttered. He set about pulling loops from where he'd wound them on his palm with his middle finger. He examined his newly made cat's cradle with the same intricacy he'd looked at his bleeding hand. "They're cursed. But, apparently, they're my family."

"What?"

Finally. Something Felix didn't seem to know intuitively. About damn time. From there, he told Felix the story. Shading the fun of the streets and free hours with heavy emphasis before digging into the finer details.

Felix paused, he was tense and looked ready to vibrate like the strings on Peter's guitar if he were to strum him. Then he said, "Maybe they're fairies."

Untangling the string, Peter started again, looping one hand under the other to watch the string grow tight against his palm. "How do you figure?"

"Your memory. They were kicked out of the convent; the convent is made of fairies, minus the banished ones. Add immortality and magic beans, it makes sense."

"They must've gotten themselves banished for...getting affectionate," Peter mused. "They're like Tink and the others, then. Banished fairies, must be my type."

This was, perhaps, not the best thing to say. Felix had, initially, disapproved of "Tink" at a fundamental level Peter couldn't explain. But then when she'd proven herself to be tough and sharp-witted and entirely willing to let the Boys go about their business, he'd relented. He'd relented when he realized he wasn't in danger of losing anything to a pair of curvy legs.

Peter finished his second cradle and turned to Felix, "Play with me."

A long moment passed. Felix's eyes were stormy and dark and filled to the brim with frustration.

"Come on, _Felix."_

Rolling his eyes, the tall Lost Boy slid off his chair to rest on his knees in front of Peter. He took hold of the two x's on either side of Peter's hands and pulled them under in one fluid movement. Peter beamed, not sure what he was so impressed with. He took hold of his own intersections to change the net.

In spite of himself, he caught all of the twitches to the corners of Felix's mouth and the way his teeth sunk into his lower lip.

"What?"

Peter grinned, moving his thumb and index finger along the strings to loop them under, create something new from the cradle. "Does something always have to be on my mind?"

He couldn't help but laugh at Felix's reply. At the dry expression, practiced eyes knew. They had seen the intimate way his mind worked, and understood. The question didn't need an answer.

Felix took the sides of the string, pulled it sideways. A box of diamonds appeared on the fraying yarn.

"But as it happens," Peter quirked a brow, watching Felix's hands loop through his. Heat radiating between their palms and the friction of the yarn. "I do."

Felix's middle finger slid on the ridge of Peter's knuckles. Accidental, momentary, wrenching a pause into their game. Silence.

Peter twitched in his hand. There was an emphasis in the cup of his hand, a string of warmth left tracks behind from Felix's fingers. He was probably still preoccupied with the new knowledge of the day; antsy to get on with it and solve the latest mystery. So, he pressed on.

"We'll be going for dinner."

Felix jolted back into the moment, began pulling edges and loops of string through the empty spaces. His shoulder, in order to get through, bumped up against Peter's arm. The silence threatened again. Peter crushed it in its tracks.

"Don't you think it'll be fun?"

"Fun," Felix replied, voice dry underneath the way his eyes trailed. The sound was enough to suggest his train of thought ran on a different track.

Which, wasn't exactly uncommon, but Peter couldn't help but feel the spike in his abdomen. They used to be so good at getting on the same page. Used to be so good at conspiracy and cleverness. Intertwining string between their fingers. The chance to cut to palm-to-palm, and he wondered if Felix would have a pulse through it. Did he have a pulse? Did the ashes revive his heart?

Once Peter was done, Felix admitted he didn't know the next shape, admitted defeat. And, from there, they busied themselves looking at the floors and pennants on the walls, caught in the middle.

It wasn't boredom, Peter could always pick out something interesting or entertaining. Entertainment laid around the room, after all. Instruments and books and computers and Frisbees and magnetic darts and a black and white ball they'd kicked in the corner. It wasn't that he was at a loss. It was that he did not want to move. He didn't feel like air or oxygen or the persistent force of the tides. His electricity grew with proximity and stubbornly clung like mucus to his stomach. He felt...human.

Annoying.

"What?" Felix asked, voice quiet and soft and edging on those same tips of anxiety. One word and he'd spring. At least that hadn't changed feeling since Neverland. Felix had always been reactive. For someone who wore so many masks, who tried so hard to contain his emotions, he'd always been transparent as a ghost.

"I'm thinking," Peter replied, leaning his elbows on his knees. "You seem to be doing well sliding into your cursed life."

"I suppose. It can be shocking to see where he and I differ."

"I've noticed the pattern. Anything you just can't stand about dear old Felix Antony?" Peter could catch the gleam in Felix's eyes while the boy considered.

After a short wait, Felix said, "Academics."

"Hm?"

"He cares so much about doing well in classes. Measures his worth in it, no matter how many friends he's got, or if they seem to want him around. His priorities are flipped."

Peter's grin split his face. "You're a nerd?"

The vernacular was odd, in this context, but at least he could harness the sentiment behind it.

Felix frowned. "Don't you have the memory?"

"Peter Banning seems to think you're this dangerous bad-ass. Never would have guessed."

"Does that bother you?"

Peter straightened his back. He hadn't quite considered it in context. Granted, there were a few things Peter didn't quite understand about his cursed self. Why he got so involved, why he tried to present himself as this quintessential idea of a surrogate son. He wanted to be someone who was popular and active. But, what he was, was someone who...nobody actually liked, and why it was so important to Banning to pretend he didn't notice.

The curse had, in a way, given him a do-over. Which was partially what he'd wanted, but it was a do-over of the wrong life. The whole thing reeked of Malcolm.

"Peter?"

Shaking his head, abrupt, Peter said, "I'm fine."

Grey eyes shifting around. Felix stared in dirt-filled corners and on the dusty spines of unopened textbooks. Without actually looking at Peter, he asked, "Do you...have memories? Everyone references this past we have, but I can't clear my mind enough to access it."

Looking into his own mind, Peter caught flashes of hands, the pressure of a chest against his, a lip between his teeth.

Peter jolted. Blocks got in the way and fire started to use Peter's spine as a fuse. Bats and birds fluttered all over inside his intestines. He got lightheaded as though he'd been gnawing on something magical and psychedelic. It was best to just immature further and ignore it. It was supposed to be a straightforward curse, a static placeholder of Rumple's unclever design. No need to make it complicated with _introspection._

He straightened. "Give it time, it should come. Or use context, make it clever." He stood from the futon. "We should probably head out, I want to poke around and see what becomes of our dinner invitations."

 

* * *

 

 

_It's late by the time they get back from the airport, Peter's carry-ons and checked luggage load him over like a pack mule. Neal carries the heaviest trunk that still, ultimately, would have been lighter. Everything Peter owns, his whole life up to this point, condensed into canvas rucksack._

_He's been in foster care for a few weeks while the paperwork went through, but he's glad to be done with it. Even if he's moving in with family he's never met on the other side of the world. Between the choice of drug addicts, drug dealers, and jailbirds, it wasn't hard to figure out who was able to take custody, and who was not. Much more practical, apparently, to keep him in a system._

_But Peter would honestly consider eating his left foot if he let it stick. He wasn't about to be someone's Project._

_And so, after two days on , he got a lead. He always knew his grandfather had run off to the U.S, probably. Peter never met the man, he probably got himself shot in a bar fight. Nobody knows. But the important thing was that Grandfather didn't croak before having another kid. Peter has an uncle. Small world._

_It was a long shot, but Peter had to try something. So, he wrote an email to Elias Gold. Sprinkled it with hints he knew what happened to Elias's father,_

_And he got a response. And a visa. And next thing he knew, he was flying over the Atlantic Ocean in a metal hunk of junk to go and live with these people._

_They'd all come like an entourage, greeting him at the airport, and taking him out to a restaurant on the way back to Storybrooke City. And all Peter could do was wonder exactly what he got himself into._

_But, if nothing else, he has his own room here. He's unpacking when Uncle Elias hobbles in, the worn end of a cane clicking against the hardwood. Stiffly, he says, "Are you settled?"_

" _Getting there."_

" _Good. Tomorrow morning at eight, we have an appointment at St. Messina's school. You'll select your classes, tour, and purchase your uniform."_

_Peter stops. "I don't have money."_

" _I'll buy it." Uncle Elias waves his hand, nonchalant and easy. "Afterwards, I have to run to my shop. You can either come with me or explore the city, which would you prefer?"_

_A smile breaks out over Peter's face. He can't help it. Wandering through cities alone, seeing the cars and the people and radiating energy. Smog and noise pollution make for a helluva temporary high. He loves cities. They're an adventure waiting to happen. "Explore," He says._

_Elias nods. "Do you have a working mobile phone, if you should need it?"_

" _Not one that can call. But I can get online fine."_

_Digging in his pocket, Elias produces an iPhone. "Yours," He says, "Thought you mightn't have had the foresight to get one on your own."_

_Peter's jaw drops. Who the hell can just produce an iPhone out of his pocket like magic? What kind of a fucking richman magician was he living with? But all he says is "Thanks."_

_Elias holds both hands on his cane and coughs, small. "Well, you finish getting settled and come down. I'll turn the kettle on, and we need to have a talk about my expectations for you."_

_Oh. Oh no._

_The expectations aren't the best part, but Peter takes them in stride. He expects it's because of the family's shoddy past and cycles of self-destruction. All he had to do to keep Elias off his case was keep his grades up, join at least one extracurricular to keep him out of trouble, and don't wind up behind bars. He doesn't even have chores._

_"In regards to money," Elias says, and Peter winces, thinking now's the part his illusion shatters. But he continues. "I don't give hand-outs. Everything comes with a price. You'll work if you want it. You can look in town or for me in my shop. Is everything clear?"_

_Damn. He ran right into what he was running from. The irony is not lost on Peter. "As glass."_

 

* * *

 

 

Peter, for his part, loathed whenever his unwelcome memories would sneak up on him. He didn't necessarily have to let them. One quick gust of will and those boring fairy tales would skitter away. They'd evaporate. But that'd be cheating. His curse, his game, his rules; and he had to play by them. What kind of spoil-sport would he be if he didn't? So, he resigned to tolerate these memories of the nonperson Peter Banning.

This was an odd part of the curse's nature, and Peter thought (assumed, really) it'd been a means to temper Snow White, make her docile. But what did a personality change matter to the people who didn't realize they were ever a more bright and vibrant and _fun_ version of themselves? It took some dormant facet of a personality, or a life long forgotten, and extrapolated it to become the defining factor.

In Felix, for example, he was still largely the same Lost Boy he'd always been. but when Felix Antony had run off he'd garnered a new family without aid. He was kinder for the ware, but so much more desperate to prove himself. Felix the Lost Boy was kind to those who deserved it. But he was not nearly so desperate. Neverland constantly gave you new ways to prove yourself. He didn't have to try so hard, and it wasn't nearly as annoying as having a best friend who, in his memories, did.

The Lost Boys translated their lostness and treachery in clouds of smoke. Enveloped in their own decadence, they didn't even want to look for those families their real selves wanted so badly. Peter hoped their souls were choking on it.

There was no point to it, nothing he could gain from this knowledge. They were just annoying memories of some damn _fundraiser_ Banning went to.

 

* * *

 

Their car, small plum jalopy, parked on the curb in front of a green manicured lawn and plain red bricks in neat rows.

Felix hadn't lifted his hand from the car door when he turned to Peter, "Why are we doing this?"

"Entertainment," Peter answered, kneading at the tendon in his jeck. . "Think of it like a puzzle."

"A puzzle that involves going to a Sunday dinner." Felix scuffed the concrete driveway with his heel. "With _Baelfire_ and _Rumplestiltskin."_

"You were friends with Baelfire once, weren't you?" Peter said, offhandedly sliding along the hood of a car. His fingertips skimmed light as a moth's wings on the marigolds lining the driveway.

"For fifteen minutes, perhaps."

"Fifteen minutes. Fifteen years. What's the difference?"

"I don't see your point."

Peter snickered. "I'd rather not pass up any chances to put this all together. Make a socialite of yourself, Felix, won't you? For the game?"

They reached the base of the porch. They passed four meticulously painted steps, two boxes of seedlings and a birdfeeder. And then they were at the door. A pretty door with stain-glassed windows and a polished doorknob, no fingertip markings visible. He turned to Peter with one more question before he'd behave himself. "Your aim is...knowledge for knowledge's sake?"

"It'll amount to something," Peter scoffed, trotting up the front porch steps. He rang the doorbell, cementing their presence in this despicably adorable house, and tacked on, "I just have to figure out what."

The door slid open noiselessly in front of an aged face, an old woman with a sharp nose, "Oh, Peter, you've come! Felix too!"

Flipping through names and faces only took a second before this one came up: Flora.

She grinned opened the door wider and ushered them in, "Come in, come in."

They heeled off their shoes from something that felt eerily like habit for something they'd never actually done before. In the hall, as could be expected, there was collage of photographs. In the middle, a photo of the wedding. The two women dressed up and standing in front of City Hall hand-in-hand. There was a family portrait with them and Rumple and Baelfire and even Peter. Plastic smiles awkwardly sitting in front of a background. Faded framed photographs of Rumple as a young, pudgy faced lad, one with his hair gelled back, two front teeth missing. And a large matte frame, featuring a slimmer face in a polo shirt; Rumple at an age Peter Pan hadn't been checking in. Rumple at an age Peter Pan hadn't known him.

Peter stopped his his tracks, almost running into the large antique spinning wheel they kept under the whole display. In his right ear, Felix whispered his name and he jolted back to reality and had to take one extra-large sized step to fall back in behind Flora.

She opened the door to the kitchen. Scents of steaming broccoli, hearty lamb roast marinating, and something meaty and bitter rushed out the room. Felix barely caught the word on Peter's lips, " _Haggis?"_

Flora peeped her head into the kitchen, heat from the small room rushed into the hall. "Peter and Felix are here!" She called inside, "Do you need anymore help in the kitchen, Fauna?"

Felix spun his head over to Peter, their eyes met in a moment of solitarity for the disdain of the idea of actually walking into that hellroom and _helping._

Fauna's voice, clipped and accented, replied cheerfully, "Well, since Elias brought the sides from home I don't think so. Neal and I can handle the main course, can't we?"

"Sure thing," Neal's voice, for whatever reason, surprised Felix. He tried not to sneer or peek in to see the former Lost Boy, adult, goateed, and standing over the stove. Tried not to think of how he was helping in a way he never had on the island.

"Well," Flora said, turning back to Peter and Felix in the doorway. "Elias's already set the table so I suppose you'll have to just wait for supper. Sneaky timing, you two," Contradicting her vocal cheer, her face looked...disapproving. Disapproval in the subtle way only a lined and wrinkled face could. "Careful, don't get lazy."

Peter shot her his most flattering grin, the one that made everything around him beautiful. "Wouldn't dream of it."

 

* * *

 

When Rumple noticed them, lingering by the doorway in the den, he didn't move from the sofa. Only looked up from his magazine and frowned. "Peter. You ran out of my shop in the middle of a task."

"I had a previous engagement." He said, normal confidence bringing him to step further in the room and take up more space. Felix remained in the doorway.

Rumple flipped a page on the magazine. "I won't lecture you on responsibility this time around. If only to save the mood of dinner."

"You know...Uncle…" Peter stopped when the word grazed over his tongue. It sat like barbed wire.

"What?"

"I know I'm not a grown-up, but you don't need to nag me like an ill-behaved child."

Rumple raised a slight brow. Peter saw the rippling suggestion of a reflection and couldn't help but perk up, in the smallest ways, the most subtle of tells. Felix noticed them in the synapses between his shoulder blades, the corner of his mouth, the stim in his right ring finger.

Peter went on, "We'll be much more content if we let our dynamic change with the times. Don't you think?"

With his mouth a thin line, Rumple narrowed his gaze. After a beat, he sighed, "You've had a rough few weeks," His eyes slid behind Peter, to Felix and the doorway, and they both could have growled. But he continued without elaboration, "It's not the best time to be making negotiations. Particularly when you're trying to make me go lax with you."

Peter, for his part, seemed entirely unfazed. "Would I be me if I didn't try?"

"You will let me know how that works out, I'm certain." Rumple said, turning back to his magazine.

 

* * *

 

 

_"Hey, I'm heading down to the dining hall," Felix says, closing his laptop and resting it on his desk. "Did you want to come?"_

_It's October, and Peter may or may not have just isolated the last part of the sentence with an abrupt, annoying Yes Please, oh God, Yes, popping into his mind. They've been roommates for a month, and Peter thought he'd be over this by now, pausing with an abrupt,_ Come on Banning, get your shit together.

_Cupping his hands over the strings on his guitar to stop the vibrato, he silences his embarrassment the second the strings still, taut and tense under his fingertips._

_"I would, but I've got dinner with my great-aunts."_

_Felix's face draws tight as the strings, and he's damn near to tilting his head. Peter can feel the flush in his cheeks._

_"What?"_

_Felix blinks a few times. Peter wishes he could understand the kid. Wishes he knew that he was thinking. But he's smart enough to know the more badly you want something, the more unattainable it is. Or vice versa. Peter can't figure out what correlates to what._

_"What?" He presses, when Felix doesn't reply._

_"It's just...dinner with your great-aunts."_

_Peter frowns. "Just because they're lesbians doesn't mean they can't do normal grandmotherly...things."_

_"Not where I was going with that," Felix deadpans. Peter has to bite his lip. "It's...you."_

_"Hm?"_

_"I can't make sense of you."_

_Rubbing his thumb on the grooved edges of his guitar strings, Peter can feel the instrument rise with the motion. "I'm not hard to figure out."_

_"You skip class, but have seven different activities with band practice and fucking model U.N. You're addicted enough to cigarettes, it's obvious you didn't just start last year, you can't stand adults telling you what to do, and yet you go to family dinner every week."_

_Peter looks away, meaning to look cool but probably looking like an enormous idiot when all's said and done. "Well, it's a helluva lot better than cafeteria food."_

_"That so?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"..."_

_"..."_

_Although this is a natural stopping point of conversation, Felix keeps it going. "What do you have?"_

_It happens on a breath, like Peter can't believe he's taking this chance, one long stream of words before he can stop himself. "Why don't you come with me and find out?"_

 

* * *

 

 

They'd already set a place for Peter, as though they'd been expecting him, but not for Felix. A desk chair was pushed up to the table for him, but otherwise the place was set the same: glass, two forks, two spoons, one knife, serviette.

The hot serving dishes made it to the table. Dinner was something of a sight to behold. Felix had to pan from one side to the other, swiveling in his chair. Steaming rich dishes and a sweating pitcher of clear water, a gold-rimmed bowl of slaw and another of salad. Sometimes, Felix remembered, they'd have magic feasts on Neverland. The table was never as picture-perfect as this, but the scents tickled his nose with nostalgia. He might've let himself ease into it, if the company were a little different.

Fauna said grace. Felix watched passively. Peter, Neal and Rumplestiltskin all steepled their fingers against their wrists. None of them were even trying to consider the tradition by the time Flora chimed "Amen" along with Fauna.

Serving up plates was a mechanical, long process. Everyone took a serving dish closest to them, helped their plates and - politely - passed to the right. Felix was sweating by the end. _Somebody just grab the lamb's leg and bolt it down already._ But the dishes were served, without passion or zeal, and even Felix found it automatic. He wondered, briefly, how many times Felix Antony had done it. He wondered why the false person of Peter Banning would have brought him to Sunday dinner with his Great-Aunts.

"So," Flora said pleasantly, carefully cutting her lamb into the tiniest square imaginable. "Any stories from the week?"

Neal chortled, and when eyes were directed to him, was obliged to answer. "Well, I almost got hit in the head with a frying pan."

" _What?"_ Rumple, or rather the sharp-suited, cold-hearted cursed version called Elias Gold, stared across the table at his son.

Gnawing on the inside of his cheek, Neal winced at the immediacy of the response. "It's nothing, Papa, it was an accident."

"How could it be an accident? Who was trying to hurt-"

"It's fine." Neal insisted.

"What happened, Neal?" Fauna broke the brewing argument with a harsh motherly glare.

Neal fiddled with the napkin in his lap. "Well, I was tired and walked up an extra flight of stairs and accidentally walked into the apartment above mine. My fault."

"But she didn't assault you?" Mr. Gold grumbled, showing a small portion of Rumplestiltskin through the cracks on his face.

"No." Neal insisted. "Actually, we have a date next Friday."

"Oh!" Flora grinned, dabbing the side of her face with a serviette. "Well, tell us about her then."

"It's one date, Gramma…"

"Still! Tell us!"

Neal sighed and offered up the exposition. Her name was Rae Corona, she was a hairdresser downtown. But she filled her time with an incredible amount of hobbies like painting and candle making. She'd recently moved to Storybrooke, and she had a pet chameleon. "And, um, yeah. That's Rae."

Fauna smiled and had to take a moment to wait for a reply for the small square of food she was chewing on. After she'd cleared her mouth, she smiled, "She sounds lovely."

Neal nodded, halfhearted and eager to switch the subject when he directed his attention across the table. "How about you, Papa? What happened this week?"

Gold paused, chewing through his own slaw slowly. Then he said, "Nothing any different from last week."

Peter drew his brow down, wheels visibly turning as he looked at his son, but in such a way even Felix couldn't decode what he was thinking.

"Nothing at all?" Flora said, voice a pinch sharper than it'd been before. All attention moved to the woman cutting through the cover of her haggis. "We overheard you were raising the rent for the convent."

A long sigh held the air and Gold bid his time with a small draught from his glass. "The standard of living is going up in Storybrooke City. It's fiscally responsible to work with it, Mama."

Flora frowned. "If you _need money,_ Elias, we've always been talking about how we should pay rent, too."

"I won't be charging rent to my mothers."

Felix felt Peter stiffen in his chair, fork caught mid-stab into his meat.

"Oh, why not?" Flora held her fork in hand, more forcefully than before. "Legally speaking, Elias, you have to."

"And besides," Fauna nodded to her wife across the table. "We're perfectly capable. Let us pay rent for our house and our business."

"I'm paying it forward."

"Elias!" Flora looked scandalized, hand over her heart. "We adopted you because we love you. You don't have to keep score."

Fauna reached out to touch Gold's hand, "We won't stop being your mothers if you stop spoiling us. Love isn't a business transaction."

When Gold's lips drew to a tight line, Rumplestiltskin returned to his face. Blink and you'd miss it; in a single second the Dark One was replaced by the man.

"We're being rude, directing the conversation to such personal matters." He gestured over to the edge of the table. "I see Peter and Felix are talking again."

With an abrupt gulp, Neal swallowed a mouth full of cole slaw and mumbled, "Yeah, that's not rude."

Felix stared. For a flash of a moment, in Neal, the Lost Boy seeped through. Baelfire always had so much potential, Felix thought, lifting his water glass to his lips to hide his expression. The kid could have been great.

"As a matter of fact, we are." Peter, growing in his spine at the attention changing focus, quirked a brow. "We kissed and made up."

Felix could feel the water trickle into his lungs, slowly, as though the earth had begun to screech and rotate in fragments. Spluttering out the water from his airways, he slapped his own chest to get air moving.

The silence seeped in, cold and awkward as Felix took hold of his own breath. The only sound was the screech of forks and knives against plates. Rich food melted in his mouth. But he wanted something to gnaw on.

Felix could hear the snap of a grandfather clock in the hall, the pendulum swinging loud in the illusion of time passing like it should.

Clearing his plate of slaw, Neal broke the silence. "So, guys, the semester's under way. How are your classes going?"

Peter swallowed his food, uninterested in this development. "Fine."

Neal waited for an elaboration, and when none came, he turned to Felix. "What about you? Haven't seen you in a while, what classes are you taking this semester?"

Felix should have known he'd have to dig through his fake memories at some point. He braced himself for unreality and dug in. "Um...Political Sci, Botany, Leadership Ethics, and Banned Books."

"Oh, Banned Books, I took it a couple semesters ago."

"Are you still going to SBU?" Peter said, brow down, wheels churning in his head; proud of himself for calling up the cursed memory so quickly.

"Just a class or two. Figure an associate degree can't hurt anything."

Wheels turning in Peter's head, he tilted his head to the side. "You didn't seem too keen on the books class."

With a scrunch to his face, Neal tilted his head from side to side before he spoke, "It's not awful. It's just ...it focuses more on breadth than depth."

Felix blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, y'know, you read two books a week, spend one class talking about what you liked and didn't and why it might've been banned and then you move on. You touch down on them but you don't get to...dig."

From Peter, looking up from where he'd started to cut through the skin of his haggis, "But that's better."

"Well, I guess Felix can make his own decision on the class." Neal looked back to the center of the table. "Please pass the salt."

 

* * *

 

 

_Felix doesn't really know what a family looks like. He's always supposed he could. But his mother worked all the time, his stepfather would usually pass out on the couch in front of a baseball game. Dinner had always amounted to throwing a Kid Cuisine in the microwave. He'd spend his mealtime trying to stomach the syrup in the corn, and blanket everything in ketchup since, after all, at least that's a taste._

_He's taken aback by the smell of meatloaf and hardiness. By the squirmy way Peter accepts his great-aunt's hugs, like he's embarrassed and a little uncomfortable. Taken aback by the hearty handshake Neal gives him. By the wary look Mr. Gold bypasses for the sake of not shaking things up at the dinner table. Or how the older women immediately begin talking to him like he's an old friend of the family._

_It's still funny, how Peter reacts back into the car when it's over. "They aren't usually so...overbearing."_

_Felix has a feeling it's a lie. He won't call Peter out on it. Not with him looking out the window, warm from meal and a little wine-flushed._

_Twisting the key in the ignition, Felix places his hand on the back of Peter's seat when he moves to pull away from the driveway. "Felt like a corny 50s sitcom."_

_And maybe Peter's emboldened by wine when he says, "So does that make you the feather-haired quarterback I bring home for Sunday dinner?"_

_"It's Saturday."_

_Laughing at himself, Peter focuses on his own train of thought. "I think next you take me to some overpass and give me your class pin."_

_"You're the one with the extracurriculars. Wouldn't you be the one to pin me?"_

_Peter laughs again._

_Two weeks later, they experience the double meaning of the term._

 

* * *

 

Peter went to the back garden after dinner with a cigarette between his teeth. The grass was dry and browning, flat against the earth, unaware it could rise and the snow wouldn't be there to smother it anymore. Sighing, Peter cocked his head. His exhale hadn't broken through silence; it only added another layer to the humming, clung to the air.

Flora and Fauna's windows were closed tight. But he could still hear a muffled sound of dishes clanking into the washes. The screeching and rumbling of cranes and tractors and the beeping alarm of cement mixers added to the noise. The bustling in the heart of the town, vibrating through the bricked, picket-fenced houses. Noisy, busy. It reminded Peter of the beastial squawks and roars perpetually reverberating through Neverland. He tapped the ash clustered on the lit end of the cigarette and watched it fall to the ground.

"Still smoking, huh?"

Peter pivoted on his heel to find Neal leaning up against the back door frame. He answered by way of offering a long column of smoke to the sky.

Neal shook his head. "Honestly I'm a little surprised you even started. You saw how many times my dad tried to quit and couldn't."

"Our family's a bit prone to addiction, aren't we?" Peter snickered, taking another long drag.

Neal frowned, taking a seat on the cold wooden porch behind him. "You aren't doing yourself any favors by not trying, though."

Peter took another breath. Engines revved, sound travelling over the canopies and through the ground, trees quivered in the face of development.

Trying again, Neal said, abruptly, "So, uh, not to pester you or anything, man. You and Felix are...doing okay?"

There it was again. The damn superimposed memory of the curse Peter just didn't have access to. "Why shouldn't we be?"

"Look. Peter. I have no idea why you two were split for a while and I don't need to know."

Peter tapped his cigarette again. It was too soon. The pathetic droplet of ash barely coated the blade of grass it fell on.

"But, you know I'll be in your corner if you need someone to be." Neal stopped and considered his choice of words. "Someone who won't get overly defensive."

There was history here, but tapping into it felt like effort. The only thing he wanted to focus on was the feeling of fire on his teeth. It was odd, having Baelfire care about him. A century with him in the ranks of Lost Boys, and they'd never had quite this sentimental of a heart-to-heart.

Expelling smoke, Peter turned back to his "cousin." "Why are you so convinced I need somebody in my corner?"

Neal scratched the back of his neck, the smallest trace of a wince on his face. "Oh, come on, don't take it like that."

"No. Really."

"You know what it's like. You went from private school to a public university, got in a serious relationship fast, all your friends are his friends. I just want you to know you're not alone if things get rough."

"Got it," Peter mumbled. He the remainder of his cigarette onto the grass and extinguished it underfoot. Halfheartedly, he turned back to Neal. "But it's fine."

The conversation veered off, into nothing of consequence or importance, white noise to fill in the blanks. Running his shoe along the uneven grass, Neal stuffed his hands in his pocket. "Do you know if they've still got the push mower?"

Images of a mechanical nightmare of a contraption, pushed to trim the grasses, edging into his memory. "Not sure."

"Maybe we could go in together to get a riding mower for mother's day or Gramma's birthday or something." Neal considered, before looking up, "Or I could just come by and do it. Think she'd let me?"

Some sense of familiarity popped up. To buy some time to garner the information he needed, Peter took a second cigarette and lit it. Flora was the one who worked outside, with plants. With the flowerbeds and cutting the grass. She took pride in it, and had been doing it herself since Peter Banning had come to Storybrooke in the distant past. With these in consideration, he said, "Probably not."

The lawn. The patch of grass and weeds around people's houses. People had always tended to gardens but... _grass?_ They literally spent their time obsessing over the lengths of grass. What were they compensating for?

And what was Neal trying to get at with his small talk about grass and lawns and mother's day gift ideas?

"Probably for the best. I was thinking of getting that picture we all took when you first came framed for Nana. Probably shouldn't be much of an expense gap."

To be blunt, Peter did not care. Trapped in the back garden, small talk closing in on all sides. For entertainment's sake, he tried to blow rings into the air. If nothing else, perhaps it would send the signal he'd rather not waste his breath on the banal.

The effort needed to deter Neal from prattling on was minimal to none at bes. In the next moment, Felix stepped through out the back door. He waited, as though he'd waltzed into some grand meeting or situation he shouldn't have been in. But, what he didn't know, was he was just the change of pace Peter had been hoping for. Waving him over, Peter blew smoke to curtain his entrance.

"How was the kitchen?" Peter grinned, sly to Felix's deadpan glare.

"In the assembly line, I was rinsing the dishes." Felix mumbled.

Neal shifted his weight onto another foot and swatted at the edges of their conversation. "Dad give you the third degree at all?"

"It wasn't pleasant." Felix said, stiff. "If that's what you mean."

Cracking a laugh, Peter shook his head. "Shoulda come out and avoided it."

"Nobody else has the excuse-"

_BRAM_

Felix jolted at the sound, and Peter watched with mild disinterest while the kid fished through his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Reading the screen, he began to slide it back into his pocket without a word.

"What is it?" Peter pressed, taking another drag.

"Just Tod."

Peter bristled. "He's been contacting you an awful lot."

Neal turned away, abruptly, scratching at the back of his neck.

But, for his part, Felix looked down at his phone, paraphrasing the message. "There's a party tonight. He wanted to know if I was still going to bring drinks."

"Did you want to?"

Felix paused, mind spinning around and obviously searching Peter's face. Peter figured he was probably brilliantly unreadable. He wondered if Felix was going to cater his answer to what he thought Peter wanted to hear. Or if he'd be genuine. Or if modifying his resolve _was_ an attempt to be genuine. So much going on, so little noise. Just the screech and putter of cars on the other end of the trees.

"Well," He said slowly. "It seems as though I've already committed. We don't have to…"

Peter had begun to nod and take another breath in, when Neal elbowed him in the ribs. The man gave him a Look, though Peter wasn't clairvoyant enough to piece together his grandson's meaning. With the sudden need to just get out and do something other than mingle among family members, Peter changed his mind. A dime, a coin-toss, an abrupt pivot of his intention, and he said, "Why not? Could be fun."


	4. Chapter 4

Wandering out to the party from Flora and Fauna's quaint little cottage with his hands stuffed in his pockets, Felix followed Peter with the rubber soles of his shoves scraping along the sidewalk, eyes skirting from one building to another. His gaze caught the water tower, set in the trees just before the bustling stark corners on the sleek skyscrapers. He let his eyes slide along the bold print, **STORYBROOKE CITY.**

He wondered if it only used the water table underground, if Storybrooke was so self-sustained that there was really no fringe area that allowed it to interact with the outside world. They had a garbage man - a big abrasive man named Ralph, and sometimes his adopted daughter would tag along - but no dump. Maybe it was all burned in the incinerator uptown. But would that be enough for an entire city's worth of waste?

That being said, where did the sewage go? Felix the Lost Boy would assume it went in the streets and the harbor, but Felix Antony considered the normal and efficient practice 'unhygenic' and 'medieval.' Where then?

They had a post office. People got mail outside of Storybrooke's perimeters. There was electric and cell power and Wi-Fi, so Felix knew there had to be some kind of connection to the outside world.

Rather than ask Peter and kill the growing mood and promise of fun that was starting to make the kid glow, as if he were a pixie or something, he racked his own brain.

Peter's Storybrooke was big enough that nobody would notice a truck from this world delivering mail from the nearest city, but Regina's wasn't, and if Peter had done something different in this regard, Felix knew he'd know it. The kid always had to remind him of the fantastic things he'd done. So that couldn't be it.

Perhaps the magic put them in a trance, or perhaps boats were able to come in and out of port to transport everything to the nearest city, and as long as they didn't stay, nothing would happen with the curse. As long as they weren't cursed themselves, they were free to leave and never hung back long enough for anyone to notice. Felix wasn't entirely confident in this explanation, there seemed to be holes in it, but if nothing else, it explained one important detail.

Storybrooke was, and always had been, connected to the rest of the world. But it was Lost. Lost in the same sense of the word that Felix had come to know and appreciate. It existed beside the world, using its wireless technology and its compost piles, but remained in its periphery. Nobody came, nobody cared, let the town learn how to sustain itself, curse or none.

They waited till they were around the corner, could hear the thumping of music and loud rambunctious whoops and hollers to conjure up the pack - twenty-four aluminum cans in a blue box. Then, with the cardboard handles cutting into the skin on Felix's fingers, they walked into the crumbly paneled house, as if they'd done it hundreds of times before, vibrating with music and loud college-aged cheers, beer cans already lining the front yard.

Felix decided Felix the Lost Boy wouldn't have considered it a party. Muddled chaos, short tickets to insanity, dark smoggy frenzy would have been the preferred term; Felix Antony had vague memories of bolting down shots or tossing ping pong balls into red rimmed cups sloshing over with beer or wrestling car keys away from the friends who swayed from side to side or sliding hips together in time to eardrum-blowing bass. He would have considered it a party. Split between two perspectives, Felix wasn't sure what to make of it, stuck in the dim lights, full of sweaty dancing and grinding over each other, hoisting red solo cups in the air as though beer was a trophy.

Felix wandered through the fray with Peter at his side, vibrating with the bass in the air. He could recognize a few shadowy figures along the side: Tom and Nick playing pool with people he didn't recognize. Wendy Darling and Tiger Lily wrapped up together in a larger armchair, a few other Lost Boys here, a Neverfairy or two there, still lost, but this time in the scraping humming pulse a tiny ecosystem.

In a dark corner of a room, a cluster of former Lost Ones laid, strung out on the furniture, staring up at the fans, waxing philosophical. Felix bit his tongue, trying not to see their blank faces of betrayal imprinted into the smoke around them, he meant to make himself scarce, at least until Simon called out to them, "Hey, Felix! Peter! You came! Want a bowl?"

Felix could feel him stiffen, his nerves twisting in the cavity of his body. Conditioned impulse to laugh with them, to rejoin the party and find solace in these friends that he'd had for centuries. The assumption and the want to be friends again; knowing that they wouldn't remember their betrayal. But was that good enough? Felix couldn't put his finger on the answer. Because nothing could redeem them for shattering centuries long loyalties, friendships, ways of life. They'd staged a coup on Pan, and hadn't even been brave enough to take part. They'd just lazed around on their pudgy little asses and basked in the fact they'd completely ruined everything.

But then their slates were wiped clean. They didn't even remember that they'd turned their backs on him, on Peter. Felix paused, caught in the throbbing lights and dizzying music's pulsation. And, to his surprise, found Peter looking at him. His eyes shook as they scanned his face, looking for a tell or a reading, as though he were going to let Felix decide if they wanted to partake. Maybe it was the Banning part of him rising up from the depths. Or maybe it was a test.

A test he'd waited too long to take, apparently, as Peter made the executive decision to frown and toss his head, haughty and abrasive, when he said, "We weren't going to smoke tonight."

Simon snorted, passing the glassware to his right, watched briefly as Cory inhaled the smoke quickly, before tossing his retort across room. "But you're a _chimney_."

Stuffing on a congenial face that'd probably go unnoticed anyway by the circle of stoners, Peter replied, "I hear variety is the spice of life."

Across the circle, a girl Felix recognized in smaller proportions as a Neverfairy broke into a fit of giggles. " _Chimney._ What a word. What a life."

"Does that make Felix the chimney sweep?" Paul asked with a crude gesture and doubling over in laughter.

It took Felix a moment to understand the exact connotation of the throw-in and gnawed on the side of his cheek. If they knew or remembered _anything important whatsoever,_ they wouldn't have made the joke. So, in a way, it was confirmation of the solid foundation of the curse. In another way…

He just wouldn't think about it.

" _Chim-ney."_ The former Neverfairiy - Lyria, maybe? Fawn? - giggled, watching the little glass tool make its way around the circle.

Simon wiped something from around his mouth and snickered low in his throat, apparently pleased that his rude comment had sparked such a spirited debate among his friends, opposed to something pointless or instigated by anyone else. He'd always been like that, Felix recalled, wanting to be more important than he was; talking about how he remembered his life before Neverland better than others, remembered and could call upon his old language (and did) or that he was smarter among the ranks of Lost Ones.

What would have happened, then, if Peter had latched onto Simon's self-bolstering? If Pan had become best friends with Simon and Felix had been left to the more evenly distributed ranks. If Felix had just been a Lost Boy, if Pan hadn't liked something small and phantasmal he'd seen that nobody else had.

If Felix hadn't been Peter's first confidant, what would he have done when the Heroes had stormed their camp?

" _...I have a lot of people who loved me,"_ The Savior had said, as though the Lost Boys' family weren't right there. As if Pan didn't take care of them, and as if their shimmering Neverland Utopia and band of brothers bonded through choice and experience over lineage, didn't count.

Would Felix have sat back when they had started to spill the information? Thought it wasn't his place and done nothing? Slipped away? If he wasn't in charge, wasn't considered important, perhaps he could have slipped away to warn Pan they were coming.

Or would he have wanted out, too?

The thought was unintentional, blasphemous and crass. With a bolt of two lives mingling, Felix fought the urge to cross himself, then and there, but the side that understood that connotation also knew that there was no way he'd be getting out of that one, if any of his former friends saw him try.

Former friends. He'd still relegated them to the past. And that, he supposed, was the end of it.

Rank did mean something, in terms of what he had done when the Heroes had stormed in. It'd made him obligated to try to conduct the camp. To lord over the heroes and try to persuade the Lost Boys back into loyalty when they jumped on the impulse to destroy everything they'd built. But even if Felix hadn't had rank, he would have tried to maintain the haven, to keep the world in place where it was supposed to be. The question wasn't of Felix's resolve. Any world, any configuration, he would have fought for Peter Pan. The question, was if their roles were reversed, would Simon conduct the betrayal? Or would he have fought tooth and nail like Felix had to maintain their lives? To keep it good and not have bothered with this cursed mess?

But sometimes the sediment in the water refused to clear and you're left with brown clouds of dirt.

He and Peter lingered, for a moment or two more, watching the wares exchange hands and getting the draught of secondhand sweet smoke, through their noses and watching the clouds spread and grow among the giggly company, sewing together bad metaphors for other people of the group and stand-ins for habits or thoughts.

If nothing else, at least Peter was still inspiration. Even if they did seem crueler than he remembered they could be. Crueler than he let them be.

"C'mon," Peter said, choosing to ignore their former friends' giggles, "Let's go put this beer away."

They found the cooler and the keg on the back porch, the air gritty with dirt and polluted in background noise of music and conversation. The contradiction laid in the view of scaffolding and half-built skyscrapers peeking over trees and shorter red-roofs.

Because the keg itself was crowded by a stranger doing handstands, Felix cracked open a can for Peter and brought one of his own to his teeth, and let hops slather over his tongue.

"Heey! Y'made it!" Tod waved around, arm wrapped around his droopy-eyed boyfriend. "An' you brought Peter too! Look, he brought Peter, Copper."

"He did," The more level-headed of the two shook his head. "Just head's up, remember it's my dad's place. So if you gotta throw up or something do it outside. But in the bushes; Dad'll notice."

"Oh, c'mon you, lighten _up!"_ Tod pulled on Copper's arm till they disappeared in the throng of people.

When Felix turned back to Peter to notice the hard line of his frown, he asked, "What is it?"

"Nothing. C'mon, there's gotta be someone interesting to play with."

Inside, they punctured through into the sea of flashing lights and plumes of smoke, groups of bloodshot eyes with blood diluted in cannabis. Dumb pranks, beer pong, long listless complaints about boring Storybrooke life, annoyances of the construction grinding in the backs of their ears all day, bodies rubbing against each other in shadows matched to the occasional familiar face masked by strangers.

 

* * *

 

 

_Eggnog's frothy and sweet on Peter's tongue; there's no rum in it this time around, and it slides down his throat without the tang or punch he'd like to bely the sweetness. For now, it's just sweet. Everything's sweet and nice and perfect and it makes the little hairs on his neck stand on end. They've gone over to Tod's, him and Felix, because they'd just decided to bite the bullet and say, 'Yeah, I guess we're together' and Tod had immediately jumped on the idea of double dates._

_And because Felix has a hard time saying no to his friends, and because Peter isn't in the place to pass up friends, they agreed, and have been waiting for Copper to show up for ten minutes, much to Tod's annoyance. Tod's mother, at least, has supplied them with non-alcoholic eggnog and frosted cutout biscuits. So it isn't boring._

_Tod's mother is a kind lady, but somewhat grating on Peter's nerves. She takes the Kind Old Woman persona to a bit of an extreme, like Flora and Fauna would have without their clipped moments of strictness or the constant swirl of tension in their family. But Tod's mom, sweet as can be with nothing interesting around the edges._

_He'd expected some intrigue when Tod had prefaced with, "Since I don't think you've met her yet, my mom's super white. Try not to act surprised."_

_Peter's familiar enough with adoption or mixed-race families not to be surprised, but he supposes, Storybrooke City is just starting to get a handle on the whole diversity thing. So maybe people are usually surprised. Felix didn't seem to have a reaction to the warning, but he did have a reaction to how quaint and nice the cabin was. The offerings of fresh bread and her happy grin when she talks about how she's glad her son is getting meeting more people._

_Tod had scrunched his face and said, "She seems to be under the impression that all I do is hang with Copper and that it's unhealthy."_

" _It's not good to have to sneak around all the time." She said. "But we won't do this around company; how about some Christmastime treats, boys?"_

_Copper arrives, twenty minutes after they had agreed to meet up, and even though they bicker for a moment on the porch, come back with hands intertwined. "All right. Ready?"_

_Peter and Felix had filled up on cookies and sweet bread back at the house, and get waters and a side of French fries; Copper orders a whole meal and Peter can't help but feel the smallest push of envy about how unabashedly Tod looks at him._

_The irony, of course, is that Felix hasn't stopped looking at Peter for the majority of the night, but when you're so used to something, it's hard to notice._

 

* * *

 

 

By the time they'd circled the house twice, Peter's tongue had gotten stuck in his cheek, pressed against skin, tense muscles, sitting on the bannister by the stairs, balancing on the dangerous diagonal. Placing his hands to the right of Peter's hips, Felix turned to him.

"If you wanted to bail…"

"No, it's fine." Peter insisted, tossing his second beer can over his shoulder and falling on the head of somebody he didn't know. "You know I like to watch the dancers."

"Not as fun as being part of it."

"Why can't I do both?"

"Because you aren't." Felix bit his tongue the second it was out of his mouth. The answer felt ridiculous. If Peter wanted to stay, then they'd stay, it was simple. It'd always be simple.

Peter shot him a well-deserved glare, "If I wanted to I would. It's still new. That's all."

"Are you certain?"

"Of course I'm certain," Peter grumbled. "I'll do whatever pleases me without your interrogation, Felix."

"You don't have to indulge me."

"I'm not. Using…" He quieted his voice to a whisper and Felix had to crane in to hear the finer details of his speech, "Using magic to get the necessary information is…" Felix knew any number of words for it: exhausting, annoying, overwhelming, but the one Peter chose was "Boring."

"It's boring?" Felix repeated, trying not to notice he was close enough to get detail on the tight pores around Peter's face.

"So, why can't I sit and enjoy the show?"

The truthful answer was Felix didn't think Peter was enjoying much of anything, with his huffy air around him. Usually the expression meant he'd disappear to his Thinking Tree for an undisclosed amount of time. Perhaps that was one of the few drawbacks about Peter's resourcefulness: Storybrooke had the potential to be a New Neverland, but it'd never have Peter's Thinking Tree.

"You know I can't listen to you if you only make your points in your head," Peter broke Felix out of reverie, drowned out in mechanical thumps but pressed up against his ear in a way that almost could, and perhaps if it were two other people who weren't Peter and Felix, _would_ have felt intimate.

Felix paused, and spoke slowly. Informing others of his perception of them wasn't exactly his style, but Peter blinked through the haze and the sound of nondescript conversations and Felix could feel warmth. Something about the sum of the parts demanded an answer. "It doesn't seem like you're enjoying yourself."

"Ah," Peter replied, slowly, rotating his head to face Felix more directly. "One of the few disadvantages of centuries long friendships."

Felix began to nod, but found himself stuck in the upwards motion for the way Peter's stare locked on him. His intestines stiffened in his gut. Some kind of momentary paralysis in his muscles. He couldn't feel the prickle of magic about the room, but it was almost like Peter had used a spell somewhere along the way, sitting up on the railing with his knees out in front of him, hands curling around the bannister. Part of Felix felt the need to speak but couldn't get it out, tongue tentative as a fawn edging onto blacktop. Part of Felix wanted to cough away the lump in his throat, the other part was too afraid to make a sound, for fear of spooking the deer.

"But I suppose," Peter said after a long wait, tilting his neck and exaggerating the slope of soft skin. "The benefits might counteract that."

Felix wished Peter would just be quiet. His words weren't fixing the situation, didn't help his deer cross the street. Maybe it'd be enough to just stand there, by the stairs, overlooking the sea of drunks and stoners and maybe they could find a metaphor lingering in the air or a reason why this could become clever or fun or constructed. Maybe it'd be enough just to stand there with Peter. No extra details, no extra words. Just sitting on the railing.

But Peter had to be quiet first to give that a try.

"You've clammed up awfully quick. Come on, I'm not about to...be careless. You said yourself that you wanted communication, didn't you?"

"You said you wanted to watch." It felt like as good of a segue as he was going to get.

Peter snickered, glad to be on the receiving end of a sentiment. "But this is so much more interesting."

"Even after centuries?"

"I said there were benefits." Peter tossed his head, leaning backwards on the bannister. His shoulders arched into air.

Elegant and swift as the stretch was, perhaps it'd been too exaggerated and caught Copper's attention.

"Oy! Get off there! You're gonna break it."

Peter stuck his tongue out at the host and remained still where he sat.

"Peter." Felix sighed. There was nothing he could say to get Peter to decide to play nice if he was in a mood.

"So what if I do break it? When has there ever been anything I couldn't fix?" Peter said, gleeful smile evaporating into thoughtfulness. Felix's face swelled with admiration and appreciation for the stilling silence between them.

Two songs passed by without a word, just standing and sitting on the stairs. Peter kept track. He didn't know what would happen at the end of the third song. Maybe he's jumped from the banister. Maybe he'd throw another can someplace - perhaps in the middle of smoking circle. Maybe they'd think the can would be a messenger from the heavens.

 

* * *

 

 

_Felix sits on a holey couch, thumbing through his phone, watching the little angry birds dart through the air and smack into bright green caricature pigs. Parties can be fun, but not usually before midnight, and it's nine, but he'd dropped off some of the liquor and figured he might as well stay. Even if house parties in their early stages are, inevitably, not fun. He could probably be running through flashcards for his bio exam right now, rather than just flinging animated birds._

_But, he supposes, it might take a long time to get to that golden spot. The perfect time, after midnight, when everyone's fuzzy and happy and moving to the eardrum-blowing music and drunk enough to jump up on a table._

_The couch gives beside him, and Felix looks up to see Peter, small glass bottle in his hands, crouching down beside him and trying to look elegant while he struggles not to get eaten by the foam on the couch. Felix would call it a rookie mistake, but the word doesn't really fit someone like Peter Banning. He's already recovered nicely._

" _How's it going?"_

_Peter grins. "The only people here are the people who can't afford to pregame, so what do you think?"_

" _You could always come back later."_

" _You're my ride," Peter's face scrunches, "Besides, it'll be fun to see the before and after."_

_With the slightest stim in his fingertips, Felix slides his phone back into his pocket. No longer needing it, "Who'll get the before and after on you?"_

_A grin that's so bright, Felix can feel his stomach quiver, can feel the warmth growing in his chest as Peter says, "I was hoping you'd be up for that challenge."_

" _You want me to sit around and watch you all night?"_

_Brows darting up and leaning forward, Peter gives him a look, a bright eyed all encompassing look that wraps around him from all directions. "You'd do it anyway."_

_A quick chortle and Felix leans back. "Watch the ego, Peter."_

" _I'm a musician. Not a chance." Peter grins and falls in after him. It feels warm and odd and jittery, and Felix wonders how much longer this ill-advised crush on his roommate is going to last. "A little self-aggrandizing never hurt anyone."_

" _Tell that to any character in any book."_

_Peter laughs, musical and loud and blunt, "That's books, I'm talking about real life here."_

" _Don't think it translates?"_

" _In a way, but it's what you make of it," Peter says lightly, inching forward. "And I intend to make memories out of you."_

_Abruptly swishing over to see Peter, Felix hasn't realized that they're sitting on the same cushion, close and radiating into one another, but his eyes fixate and examine on Peter's face before he gives his permission. The small imperfection of a pockmark between his eyes, the bow of his mouth. After swallowing, thick and heavy in his throat, he asks, "Who talks like that?"_

_And before Felix knows what he's doing, he's got a hand on the back of Peter's shoulders, Peter's calf is spilling over the side of his thigh, shin bumping the inside of his other leg, and their mouths flow together, like hot and cold air meeting, spinning and swirling from long-waited pressure released._

_They don't wait for the magic hour after midnight. They don't even wait for nine o'clock. They just have a few more drinks and hang off each other before they get an idea that's unquestionably better than hanging around and waiting for a house party to get good, and so, they scram._

 

* * *

 

 

The third song ended.

Peter leaned back again. Far, this time, so he could arch the middle of his spine and feel the stretch. Felix, casual observer and a few drinks in, must have thought he was falling and had stepped closer to catch him in case. The bubble of silence between them punctured as Peter grumbled, almost inaudibly, "Stop _worrying."_

"I'm not."

"I can't believe that." He said, inching in closer so they could speak privately. Felix smelled like synthetic soaps and snarly hair ghosted over Peter's cheek. "Centuries and you're still so unadventurous."

"That's quite the accusation."

"It'd have to be. Why are you so close all of a sudden, hm?" Peter raised his brow, ready to take hold of his winnings from the argument, "You wanted to be there just in case."

"Evidence?"

"Can't you read your own body language?" Peter grinned, wry, and cocked his head to the side. "You've gone into silent protector mode. Great for patrols on Neverland, not so good for a party. So, come out with it, then." Peter turned his head to speak over the music. What was the point of being clever if nobody could hear him? The music was giving him a headache, wub-wubing all over their brainwaves and scrambling everything. "What's inspired this leg of stoicism?"

Felix frowned, interested all of a sudden in the way his thumb scraped against the varnish of the bannister. "Can't hear myself think."

"Ah." Waving Felix up with him, using his index and middle finger, he led the kid up the stairs. Up to a narrow hallway adorned with hideous deer heads and a raccoon's pelt. Once they could hear one another without yelling, he turned back to his friend. "Better?"

Felix kept still and Peter could feel the tangible prick of annoyance at the indifference. "Obviously that wasn't what was really on your mind."

And when Felix's face twisted into something unpleasant, Peter's patience wavered, like the last few turns of thread on a spool.

"Out with it."

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Felix slouched lower. His obvious tell for feeling inadequate, trying to make himself small. Why? Peter let his eyes slink over his friend, prodding for every tell or reason he might have been curling up.

"You orchestrated this curse in a specific way. I want to appreciate your attention to detail and everything you've put into it."

He could feel the _But_ humming in his vocal chords and the anticipation of contradiction stiffened his shoulders.

Felix went on. "I'm having difficulties understanding how I fit."

"Go on."

"Why does everyone seem to think that we're involved in some big romance? Why do I have memories of you and I-"

"Stop." Peter said, extending a hand forward. There was no spell on his fingers, but it shut Felix up just the same. He wasn't ready to look into those memories. They'd teased in Peter's mind for a beat, a few times, but he pushed them down, did not engage. "First off, it isn't romance. I thought I made that abundantly clear."

"You did." Felix's voice was tighter than normal. Peter elected to ignore it.

"Something got lost in translation. The curse has a mind of its own, I just pointed it in this direction or that. So these are the roles people see us in. We don't have to abide by that, not if we don't want."

"Won't people notice a difference? What if they figure it out?"

Peter waved an irritable hand. "People see what they want. In everyday life, people aren't so clever as me or you."

Drawn tight, as if on strings, Felix finally met Peter's eyes, the one place he'd been hesitant to look. Familiarity, fraternity, home, thousands of memories of Neverland pooled and swirled on the surface. Along with the hazy superimposed memories.

As if following that line of thought, Felix asked, "And what about the memories?"

Peter didn't have to ask which ones. They came flooding to his mind at the suggestion. Flirting and dodging for half a semester, hooking up after a house party. Not seeing or hearing from each other till Thanksgiving Break was over. Foregoing the niceties when they came back to immediately plunge into themselves. Deciding, what the hell, might as well go for it.

Peter could see it all, as though it'd actually happened. As though it weren't a bedtime story. As though the curse had tapped into something real. Real and frayed the edges in just the right way to get the most attention, to make these memories. This twist, the showstopper.

He wondered, for a beat, if Regina had a similar analog. But what he said, dark sensory memories firing through his mind and Felix staring at him so intently, was "Aren't you curious?"

"What?"

An odd grin fixed on Peter's face. He could feel Peter Banning, his mannerisms, his attitude, rising up like cicadas from the ground, "Haven't you ever wanted to try?"

"I...I hadn't thought about it."

"Think about it. Do you want to?"

Felix's brows furrowed. For a boy with so many centuries under his belt, so many battles and wars forged, there was something astounding in his naivete. But that was always a quality Peter had liked. He spoke, "But you'd said...romance isn't…"

"It's _not."_ Peter said, adamant, convincing. "It's having a friend and…" He considered, quirked a brow when the preferred word choice popped into mind. "Wanting."

Felix nodded, understanding this train of logic.

"And I've noticed, for quite some time now," Peter made his voice smooth, silky, kind. The kind of voice he put on with Henry. Felix would be sure to notice, know what that voice entailed. Peter didn't know how to talk like that without a voice dripping in white-lies, in honey. "That you _want_."

"What changes?" Felix's mouth was a hard line.

"The things we do. Not even a change, really. Just a broader playing field."

Peter watched Felix consider, watched the light float around in his eyes. Nerves delicate, but not afraid. One way or another, he had his friend. The question was if he would get the specifics of what he wanted. Or if he'd get that now, if he'd get that later. How Felix would react.

The kid was marvellous at running through the wringer, truly. He could do that, get all the excess off, and fall right back into step.

Unfortunately, thinking about it just made the anticipation that much more horrible for Peter.

Felix's answer? Simple.

"Yes. But do you?"

To that, Peter couldn't help but smile. A low laugh, down in his chest. "I'm the one who's instigating, aren't I?"

"You're the type to play with your food."

"But that's what you like about me."

Before Peter knew what he was doing, he'd stepped forward and grabbed either side of Felix's hood. The fourth song ended downstairs and it was amazing how snugly his lips fit into the synapses of Felix's surprised gape.

He pulled off, abrupt, the second he put a word to what he'd just done. He crashed down from the bannister, onto the carpeted stairs and down, quickly. Over his shoulder, to Felix's dazed eyes, he said, "C'mon." 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey ya'll! Sorry this took so long, I was having some uploading problems, but I got it figured out just a few hours late. 
> 
> ALSO. This chapter is where the “Graphic Depictions of Violence” warning comes through. If Hook is your favorite, this chapter might not be for you. Remember what they said about him in Chapter 1. 
> 
> Other than that, without any further ado, this is where things get...complicated.

Peter led him through town, swaying a little bit on their feet, to the chain-link fences and bright red _KEEP OUT_ and _DANGER! CONSTRUCTION_ signs rattling against the iron in the wind. Signs that might keep the weak-willed out, people who think the signs actually have any say in what you can do or not do. But the game itself was unlocked, denying Peter and Felix from even the pleasure of finding a way up and over the fence.

                Peter grinned and outstretched his arms to the quiet disarray. A streetlight off a ways cast a hazy glow over his face. “What do you think?”

                Felix surveyed the scene, as he was bid. There were hideously yellow machines with cranes. Spiderous scaffolding tangled in webs over each other to suggest the building stay in place. It rattled, if he looked closely enough. The whole scene reminded Felix Antony of a game called Jenga. It reminded Felix the Lost Boy of those towers the Neverbeasts make every millennia or so to catch the enchanted lightning storms. Frankly, he wasn’t sure which allusion was more comforting.

                Peter was still awaiting his answer, so Felix had to find it in him to speak. “It’s got potential.”

                There must have been some nuance in the sentence lost itself on Felix. Peter seemed to roll it through his ears and over his tongue, savoring the observation and drilling it into the moment. He looked ridiculous, truthfully, damn near _smitten_ with the word.

 It’d Mean Something someday. Felix had to figure out what. That’d be the game for the night, no matter what physical exertion Peter had planned for them. The unspoken objective was to find the potential. The spoken objective? Felix would soon find out.

“C’mon,” Peter spun around on his heel and darted straight for the scaffold. “I’ll give you a boost up.”

“There are stairs.” Felix gestured off to a corner where the rickety iron steps followed one another up to this maze imprisoning the suggestion of a building.

“Climbing’s more fun.” Peter swung his leg over the overhanging bars under the scaffolding. He climbed up with arms and legs like a spider navigating a chandelier. The light was leaving, the lamps over Main Street weren’t sufficient, but the moonlight washed over them brilliant white. Glowing. Peter clambered up over the rickety assembly. Swaying deliberately against it as a counterbalance, held his hand to Felix. Felix found a foothold much easier than he had in the rocky cliffs on the Neverbeach and clambered up after Peter.

The longer they were up, the more difficult it was to see but the more the moonlight sunk its way into their blood. The metal clambered under their feet, the stabilizers wobbled unstable. But, nevertheless, they _ran._

Felix followed after Peter, his shoes were slippery against the metal. It might have been easier to kick them off and run around barefoot, but his hands kept him going. His hands and the inevitable reaching out to pull him the rest of the way. Peter was always there, tugging him up to the next storey.

They were easily five storeys up when Peter found a discarded toolbox left behind. Brandishing a hammer and a wrench he turned to Felix, “Bet these could make a decent percussion.”

When he threw the tools, Felix caught them. Peter hid his face in darkness when he let  his knees collapse under him, rattling the whole encasement around them with the momentum. Felix could have sworn he felt the building buckle. But they were stable, for the time being.

Felix scooted up beside him, legs dangling over the edge of the scaffold. Cranes and trucks and dozers dotted the ground. A garden of mechanics. The entire construction site, small and inconsequential.

The last time they’d looked over Storybrooke like this together, everything was different.

The town had adjusted and moved. zyhe skyline was different. All buildings and even a few mock skyscrapers penetrated the sky’s starry canvas. Streetlights and windows flushed with phosphorescents and incandescents surged down below. Cars whooshed and zoomed. Storybrooke was new, Felix couldn’t deny that, but there wasn’t anything farther from Neverland.

“You’re upset,” Peter’s voice broke Felix from his thoughts.

They were having a nice night, the last thing Felix wanted was to turn this into a game of cat-and-mouse. Tightening his grip on the hammer and screwdriver, Felix clanked them together in a steady beat. 4/4 time. Clank, clank, clank, clank.

Clank, clank, clank, clank.

“Avoid and evade, is it?” Peter chuckled under his breath. “But you’re still here so you’re still _listening.”_

Clank, clank, clank, clank.

“C’ _mon.”_ Peter sighed, petulant and impatient. “What’s on your mind?”

Felix practically dropped his makeshift instruments. They were up so high it might’ve killed any lingering construction workers, or rats dancing to their beat down in the dirt. “You...you aren’t gonna guess?”

Snickering, Peter reclined onto the heels of his palms. “Do you want me to? My, this is new.”

“Peter.”

“No, no, wait a moment. I want to savor this.”

Not sure if he wanted to laugh or growl, Felix leaned over and pushed Peter. It was a  light shove, not enough to knock Peter over and send him tumbling through air, but enough to knock him on his side. Felix persisted. “Go on.”

“You’re no fun.”

“You wouldn’t keep me around if I wasn’t fun.”

“Don’t get cocky, ‘s not a good look for you,” Peter replied, stretching out on the metal grates. He stared at the moon-saturated sky. The freckling wash of stars overhead faded the superimposed light around them. In a grandiose voice he capped off with, “But if you insist.”

Felix cast aside the hammer and screwdriver, the better to delve into Peter’s next turn of phrase.

“You aren’t letting yourself see the whole picture. You’re getting bogged down in the details.” Peter began, outstretching his hand as though he wanted to take down a handful of stardust and chew on their glow. “You’ve got eternal youth, knowledge other people don’t, and through me all the magic in the world. You’ve got things everyone else doesn’t, know-how and choices. But you insist to compare and contrast, instead of enjoying this world we’ve built. It will get there, but if you refuse to move on from Neverland, everything will be in place but you still won’t see it.”

Felix stopped, atmosphere heavy in his lungs. “I need to know the plan.”

“You _do._ It’s not so grand as you think it is.”

“It’s always grand with you.”

The corners of Peter’s mouth lifted, his chest puffed out, back arching minutely. A strip of skin became visible between his jacket and the hem of his jeans. “I’m flattered.”

After a beat, however, the flattery settled like dirt in a bucket. Peter stood.

Nowhere up left to go, and they clambered down, just the same as they’d gone up. Peter led the way, but this time didn’t wait for Felix to get there. And perhaps it was the lack of watchful eye, then, that caused Felix’s sneakers to lose their grip somewhere on the second storey. He flailed around like an idiot for a beat, stripping him of dignity. His sweaty grip couldn’t save him. Through the air, he sunk to the bottom of the earthy ocean.

He might’ve blacked out, hitting the dirt. If not, all he was aware of the moment he cracked on the cold ground was the raking pain in his wrist. It shook his body, head to toe, white-hot pain. Felix the Lost Boy had felt worse than this, been far more gravely injured. Felix Antony had nearly been. He’d been in fights. But there was a newness to the crackles and pains from falling. The dichotomy was the most uncomfortable part

The first thing Felix knew to do was test his fingers and toes. His toes moved around jittery in his sneakers. The hand that was not overcome with a wash of pain moved fine. The other wasn’t so lucky.

Peter appeared in his line of vision, eyes twinkling with some sort of sadistic amusement but lips twisted into a frown. “God, you fell.”

“No kidding,” Felix grumbled, sitting up on his mobile hand.

“Anything broken?” Peter remained standing straight, although he offered his hand to jerk Felix up. HIs entire body protested along with his other hand.

“My wrist,” Felix replied monotonously, finally venturing to look at it. The bruise had already gotten dark and hang at an affronting angle, swollen and bulbous around the bone.

Peter reached out, “I’ll fix it.”

“I can do it,” Felix replied without flinching. “It’s hardly fatal. I can set a wrist.”

“I’m _offering,_ and you’re saying no?” Peter seemed to have to say it to believe it.

Felix nodded. “No reason to trouble you for things that aren’t your fault.”

Peter didn’t have a convincing enough reply and, as he always did when he had nothing clever to say, remained silent. With a swish of his hand, he conjured up a splint and an ace bandage. In his other hand, he held a bauble of fire, extending it for Felix to see what he was doing.

He’d set thousands of bones before. On himself, and on Lost Boys. That never made the pain any better when Felix had to do it. Touching his wrist made him grunt and bite down on his lips, the shivers broke out between his shoulder blades. Peter stood close, biting down on the corner of his lip. Felix didn’t know why he was taking it so bad. On Neverland he was the reason for most people’s cuts and bruises, broken bones and internal bleeding, he’d never had this much concern.

Unfortunately, with a swollen wrist, it was hard to focus on anything else. With deep breaths, Felix calmed himself and swallowed down the pain from handling the shattered bone.

                “One…two…” He began slowly and then with the sharp cry and painful grunt that came alone with “ _Three_ ” slammed his hand against his wrist. The gruesome popping sound and flood - a mixture of pain and relief came next and nearly knocked Felix off his feet. The distraction came in fashioning his splint and wrapping the bandage around, firmly and tight over and over again.

“All set?” Peter asked, voice dripping with impatience and Felix knew his time to writhe around in pain was over.

“Yes,” Felix replied, standing at attention once more.

“I suppose you can’t climb any--”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU KIDS ARE DOING?” Felix was able to make out the police cruiser on the road at the same time Peter barked his order: _Run!_

He wasn’t sure how they made it out of the construction site. Maybe there was another gate open. Maybe they jumped from the basket of the crane. But they hit the asphalt and kept running. The officer must have been incompetent because the flashing of red and blue lights didn’t follow them. The officer was making their pursuit on foot. Peter and Felix just had to stay one step ahead, shoving their way through a maze of alleyways. Felix kept his eyes trained on the back of Peter’s head. They wove through alleyways and the sirens got louder. With a barking laugh, jogging backwards to see if they were making good time, he called to Felix before turning a corner, “Keep up!”

It felt like flying, soaring, clambering away from a stampede of jungle creatures. It was the most fun Felix had had in this life.

When Felix went to turn the corner, a confronting hand slapped out against him. It pulled out of step by his good hand, almost dislocating it for symmetry. By the time he blinked himself into realization, he had Peter snug against the corner, on some store’s stoop. Peter held a finger to his lips, bidding silence. Felix barely saw it, feeling the cold brick against one hand, the tightness of his cast against the dirty glass on the door. It must be a back entrance, for employees to use to take the trash out or go on smoking breaks. And there he was. He was snug in a corner pressed chest-to-chest with Peter, pressed against his heartbeat. Somehow it came as a  realization. Peter had blood and a heart to pump it, a heavy percussion against his chestplate. The footsteps loud against the pavement and crunchy vestiges of stubborn snow left on the ground without sunlight to melt it.

Peter turned his head to watch as the brown-coated moron with his jet-black hair whizzed past them in his pursuit. The tendon in his neck popped out, the light over in the alleyway emphasized Peter’s jaw. Pixie like and sharp enough to slice open a vein.  His grin manic and strong when he turned back, the nuances of his face enough to make Felix’s knees buckle underneath him. High on the moment, eyes sparkling and excited. Expressions Felix was used to. Comparable to battles that ended in the Lost Ones’ favor. Comparable to trials where banishment was too benevolent and Peter got to deliver the coup de grace himself. But high on the moment seemed like the best place to be, and observations were best left to the back row lest they disturb the thrill.

Peter was contagious, his wildfire catching on the dry twigs in Felix and exploding vibrant, just standing there.

And then they weren’t just anything. Peter’s head tilted up. Felix felt his breath, one long exhale, flash past his mouth. Peter’s hand on his chest, like he wanted to feel Felix’s heartbeat as viscerally as Felix could feel his. 

Felix wasn’t sure what was happening. Cement in his shoes kept him in place. His heart powered by some jackhammer. His knees had turned to jelly. Mind snapped to off.  Veins flushed and surged when Peter stepped forward, literally treading on the laces of his sneakers.

Felix wished he had two hands available, if only to use one to keep Peter trenched with him in the corner, and the other to keep their hips together longer.

Peter blinked, silent except for a long laboring breath. And then his teeth sunk into Felix’s bottom lip, teeth and lips and a flash of something else warm. The introduction of pain. The wetness that soothed it. Felix drove closer, abandoning the wall. Daring to curl his fingers around the edges of Peter’s shoulders.

Felix couldn’t be bothered to keep track of the play-by-play. Not whether he moved first after that or if Peter morphed the action from biting to something else. He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. Their lips were touching. Snug jigsaw fit. Everything came together with magnets and force. Felix felt like he was back at the scaffolding, breeze against his face, high up above the world.

Peter stepped back. He slouched against the wall. Eyes wide and mouth curled into a question he’d never asked before. Felix stood up once it was over. He stood, waiting for Peter to mar that beautiful silence. Something with pain and nature and syllables to spill from his mouth.

Breath was the only thing that came out. A harsh, corrosive breath. It was the kind of violence that sent lightning through Felix’s veins. Peter kissed him and he kissed back and they were caught in a whirlwind of lips and teeth and tongues and hands. Pushing the line that much farther, carrying the distinct smell of cigarettes on the air and weaving its way through both their clothes.  Peter was biting and holding him close and scraping Felix’s back with dull musician’s nails on a strong magical boy’s fingers. Peter still tasted like toffee candies. Toothpaste on Felix’s mouth blurred the taste but did nothing to dull the ache rising from the way Peter moved against him. Felix’s hands slid over him, his clothes against Felix’s knuckles and his skin beneath his palm.

Without their permission, the side doors scraped open and out stumbled a man. They broke apart to watch him, swaggering and drunk and wrapped up in a stained leather jacket. It took Felix two seconds to recognize him.

                “Hook.” Felix’s head twisted away from Peter. He watched the drunken former-pirate hobble away.

Peter just offered a big grin and whispered into his mouth. “Well, there’s an idea.” 

                Felix’s brain didn’t exactly have the majority of his blood supply, and so he blinked. “What?” 

                Peter snickered. He grew. Coming closer in the dark alleyway till he was hovering over Felix. His free hand stabilized on his shoulder, teasing on the folds of his big sweatshirt and the zipper on his hoodie.

                From Peter, his voice dark and dangerous, manic eyes sparkling: “I still haven’t given you your welcome back present, have I?”

                Felix felt heat from the glass as it transferred hands, refusing to break eye contact with Peter. He grinned. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

                Jones was drunk enough he couldn't stick to one end of the sidewalk. Pathetic, sloppy broad steps flailing from one into the other, tipping and toppling, tripping over air.

                Peter and Felix peeked around the corner of the alleyway, Peter counted back from twenty and turned to Felix, “It’s all you.”

                Felix nodded, gracious at the generosity Peter had for him in this game. He concealed the bottle in his pocket and headed off behind the once-ferocious pirate.

                The pirate who had killed Lost Boys, slammed his hook into Rufio’s chest, ripped down. The deck stained red, that battle, all in Rufio’s warm blood. Intestines ripped out of his gut, pulled on a hook, while Rufio had screamed and tried to break free, organs looped around an iron hook. The splatter of a friend’s blood on the pirate’s face had been burned to Felix’s mind for centuries. That image propelled him forward on the sidewalk. The day Rufio died, it’d been one of the last days Neverland showed any sun. Maybe coincidental, but it coincided with the ragged weeping and darkness looming in camp for days after.

                Felix kicked a can to attract attention. By the time Hook turned around on wobbly knees, Felix had slipped into the doorstep by Any Given Sundae.  He counted to five, and set out again.

                He could still remember the din of the battle. The hack of pirate swords. The blunt clang of the stone arrows and blades and thick wooden clubs. Staves up against polished, tall adults that stank of rum and body sweat. The cries and grunts and wails of battle, thick stamping against the wet sea-spray and bloodied deck. Felix could still hear Rufio’s straining and battle cries, the one he’d cultivated in a century of being Lost. At least before the Captain got to him.

                A streetlight flickered in over Jones’s head. It was too opportune a moment to pass up. Even if it wasn’t in the original timetable. He grabbed a rock on the sidewalk and chucked it at the headlights of the nearest car. The alarm went off, blaring and loud in his ears when he ducked behind the hood lest the captain see him too soon.

                The man was bound to be concerned by now, drunk or not, with two people tailing him from opposite ends. It might not be perfect payback for everything the pirate had ruined over the years. All the Lost Boys who died. All the trespassing, kidnapping, taking the wrong side in wars. They’d ruined peace with their disgusting, parasitic presence.

                The next time Felix made a noise - a deliberate snap to his fingers - he ducked to the side slower. More deliberate in his steps. More languor. He had to to make sure the pirate saw him. Jones lingered, half a beat, and by the time he turned around, Peter had emerged from the alley.

                Felix could hear Peter’s voice, “Long time, Cap’n,” from the distance. Peter’s hands shot out to slam into the man’s stomach. Jones doubled over. Felix hit the ground, ran over before he missed the good part.

                Swinging blindly, Jones tried to shove Peter off, coughing and wincing when Peter kicked at the backsides of his knee. Felix made it there fast enough to grab hold of his collar. When Felix’s fist hit Jones’s cheek, everything bloomed into light. An oversaturated sense of catharsis. Justice served with each blow, with each crush of knuckle into jawbone. Amends for all the friends who met unjust ends under the black flag. Rufio. Jason. Bins.  Immiker. Halfway. Matthias. True friends who lived Lost and died Lost.

                Felix broke Hook’s nose, thinking about the way Rufio would always do backflips when they’d dance at night. Sometimes his hair would catch on fire.

                Peter had enough dexterity to detach Jones’s prosthetic hand and kick it into the gutter.

                Rufio always talked about taking the hook for a battle prize. The closest he got was when it was wrapped ‘round his intestines, bloody and pulpy, warm and beating - at least for a few seconds.

                Felix managed to get another two punches in before Jones broke off. He began to stumble, whimpery and pathetic, off into the street.

                Face damn near wistful, Peter shook his head and wound his arms. He  hinged from the elbow in a circle.  Peter gestured after the drunken man, beaten but still refusing to go down like he deserved. “After you.”

                Jones stumbled away, frantic and erratic on inebriated legs. It wouldn’t have taken long to catch up to him, if they were going to try. They didn’t try. It was a moment to appreciate the image of a seadog running away with his tail between his legs. To let fate take its way when he stumbled into the middle of the road.

                And then a car slammed into his place. Tires screeched. A horn blared. Headlights washed over the street. Their little game crashed into reality.

                Peter tugged on Felix’s sleeve. “Go, go, go go!”

                And, together, before the driver could notice them on the sidelines, they ran into the nearest alley. Ran behind buildings and out through the street. The sound of ambulance sirens blared closer and closer and then further away again. It drifted to the wreck on Main Street, where a man had run out in front of a car.

                Exhilaration flooded through Felix’s nerves, power in his blood. Memories of battles in his mind as they turned a corner of a construction sight. They collapsed, breathing ragged and excited against the chain-link fence. Felix gasped with the buoyancy against the metal and the pain covered him as though he dove into it.  His knuckles were bruised, there were cuts on his stomach from the careless placing of the glass bottle. Hook must have gotten a few decent swings at him. They’d spawned large blotchy bruises, already aching. Peter had a bloodstain on his sleeve, his hair was tousled from running. Above all, though, was the exhilaration. It’d been so long since he’d gotten a chance to fight, speak in body language.

The ambulance sirens wailed again, likely speeding through town to take the pirate to the hospital. Lights and sirens again. No fatality, but Felix was in too good of a mood to care. He turned towards Peter, amazed how quickly he was able to breathe at a normal speed again. After a beat or so, he realized he was staring. “I…” He began slowly. “I suppose I should thank you.”

                Peter leaned against the fence. His  ankles crossed and digging his heels into the freshly turned earth. He tossed his head and replied, “Go ahead.”

                 Peter had always said if any of the Lost Boys found themselves dead, it was all part of the game. If they’d ever disagreed on anything it would have been whether or not Rufio fit that description. Therefore, all he said was, “You got your revenge against Hook when you cast the curse, thank you for seeing to it I got mine.”

                Pleased, Peter hummed, low in his throat and pivoted closer to Felix, leaning against the fence like they were lying on the ground. Felix could feel the rubber toes on Peter’s sneakers on the inside of his arches. “Hardly original. I’d suggest you find a more creative way to thank me if you really must…” He took a deep breath, almost quivered from the neck up, though that might be a burst of imagination, “ _Showcase_ your appreciation.”

                Peter held his gaze till Felix had to look away under its intensity.

 

* * *

 

 

Still riding high off their energy. The wine from dinner long since cleared. The beer from the party made their limbs heavy. Only a little drunk, they decided. Only a little. They were too excited to care. They’d crushed the enemy. Felix had no sense of time as they ran, flew, back to the dorm. Maybe Peter had magicked them a shortcut. He couldn't remember the thud of his shoes on the pavement. Not the flickering of streetlights. Nor the sun peeking up over the horizon till they were locked away. Secure in their dorm room. The sun teased light at the edges of the trees and skylines.

Not that he had much time to appreciate it. The second they stepped through into the familiar cinder-block excuse for a home,  Peter shoved. Felix hit the floor with a sharp thud. He winced as pain shot up his wrist. A lump stuck in Felix’s throat at the details of Peter’s face distorted from nighttime shadows as his chest heaved. Both of their chests heaved. Felix could feel Peter’s breath burst out from his lips.

                Felix blinked. Dizzy in the brain but adamant to do something. He had his hands on Peter’s ribs. The funny part was he could feel shards of electricity race up his fingertips at the contact. It made him tense everywhere - from his shoulders to his hips to his toes. Maybe Peter used magic to shock him. It didn’t matter. He had to move fast: preoccupy Peter with his left hand and then charge with his right. Peter was the faster one. But Felix was bigger, he had strength. If he could distract Peter, he could get him down.

                And he did. He knocked Peter off his equilibrium in a high fantasy of a moment, and they both tumbled to the rug. Felix grappled with both Peter’s wrists to pin them on the ground above his head. Flushed, breathless, and covered in dirt, it looked like Felix managed to still him.

                But not everything. Felix was startlingly aware of Peter’s hand twitching slowly from the wrists. His smallest finger nudging at Felix’s knuckles. Coaxing for...something. A loosened grip? His chest hadn’t stopped heaving. Felix felt himself go dumb, watching rise and fall of him, curled over him like that. The colors blended in front of his vision, Peter laid out, breathing hard. Felix could feel the scrape of denim getting tighter around him.

Maybe it was the way Peter had somehow maneuvered his hands around Felix’s when he wasn’t paying attention. Maybe it was the way he shuddered when he realized their palms were touching, his fingers fit snug into the synapses between Peter’s. Maybe it was when he looked down and saw Peter, the flush in his face and the threat of a new dynamic edging in the way he twitched his hips.

                A new, strange dynamic. Something they’d been edging towards, quickly, but ambiguous in their sporadic kisses.

Some of the boys did things like this in Neverland, sometimes, but Felix and Peter had been too dedicated to the cause of childishness.

_But what now?_

He relaxed, his shoulders dropped. Peter saw his opening, and the next thing Felix realized, he was flat on his back. Peter towering over him on his hands, one knee resting between Felix’s, the other edging against his hips. “Do I win?” He asked, relaxing on his elbows.

                “Depends.”  And when Peter curled his brow, he continued. “Are you done?”

                “No.”

                Taking advantage of the moment hanging on the air, Felix summoned the last of his strength to roll them over again. Honestly, Felix was surprised it worked, that Peter let him. Peter must have wanted him to, even if Felix couldn’t understand why.

“Then neither am I.”

 Thier hands were still touching. Static and magic moving between their fingers, spit firing over and over again. It was comfortable, the sounds of crickets and the  howl of a breeze and pelleting of rain against the window. No magic, no synthetics. Just their room, and the floor, and Peter around him.

Peter moved their hands. Slowly, as though he were trying to arrange a sleeping boy in such a way he would not awaken, Peter dragged their hands lover. He rearranged them like he were molding pottery clay, one moment their fingers interwoven, the next Felix’s palm was cupped down the cotton of Peter’s shirt, Peter dragging him down by the knuckle. His chest calming down, billowing softer, the material over warm skin and smooth lean muscle, padding against the softness in his belly and the trail of hair leading down from his navel, betraying his insistence of complete childhood.

 Their hands stopped, together, right above the button on his jeans. Peter slowly, as though concerned he’d wake the people in the opposite suite, left Felix’s hands to his own devices. He propped himself up on the heels of his palms. Waiting. Watching. Curious.

“Your move.”

His voice was deep, the greatest of luxuries husked over. Felix knew better than to interpret it as anything other than a dare. A dare he wanted to take, but a dare nonetheless.

                Maybe it was because Felix was still high on the rush of physical exertion. Maybe because the fractured angles of the light and the cadence of Peter’s words. It felt like he was asking Felix for something. He just wasn’t sure what.

                He started to get an inkling, however, when Peter rolled his eyes. With a slight snicker, he took Felix’s face in both hands and kissed him.  Peter’s lips still felt like long-lost puzzle piece against Peter. His hands were warm and familiar and dangerous.  Nails digging through his shirt, ducking under the hem of his clothes. Teeth out and scraping against Felix’s lip.

It was just like the last time, tucked into the door stoop of a building, But this time Peter didn’t pull away after one. He kept going. Teeth and lips and tongue. Peter’s nails flashed out against Felix’s ribs, scraping harsh. Felix could only grab at Peter’s hips. He almost lurched backwards from the surprise at the breathy, high noises Peter let slip when Felix’s mouth slide against his pulse point.

                Pulling away was the last thing Felix wanted to do, wrapped up around Peter. But when he did, he could see the street light reflecting in Peter’s eyes. Enthralling, violent, addictive and more satisfying than Felix would ever have the gall to admit.

“I said, your move.”

 Felix had to make an effort to beat down the thrill he got in the breathless air that wound its way to Peter’s voice. “Come on, what’s the fun in this if I don’t have your…” He paused, let his eyes rake up Felix’s body to the full awkward extent allowed by proximity. The gaze, for all its awkwardness, was enough to make Felix’s stomach drop. “ _Full participation?”_

Felix could feel everything. The cool air, the scent of soil and burning aspen, smoke curling through the air, Peter warm and breathing under him. His fingers dug into the dirt, waiting for something to happen.  Felix’s window to act  was closing. Trembling fingers slid down, leaving the warmth of Peter’s stomach, his soft skin. Inch by inch, the difference between skin and cotton and hard denim, the scrape of a zipper, fire and ice on his nerves.

“Come on. _Your move.”_

                Twitching all over the place, with every last move a dare, Peter grabbed his shoulders and flipped them. Felix’s back pressed against the cool floor, Peter’s knee scrubed against the hem of Felix’s jeans, his nails scraped at his ribs.

In a desperate attempt to retaliate, to be memorable, Felix bucked up. He let his fingers trace the lumps of fabric and the steady heat radiating on Peter’s skin. Tracing on his hips, the lower edges of his belly. Tracing downwards till Peter’s voice let out something hoarse and low and guttural. Felix thought he’d drown in the sensations of his voice, and all the hot, sticky parts of him.

                “There we go,” Peter replied, cheeks flushed. He was disturbingly human in his color. Muscles taut and tense and arousal pressing into Felix’s abdomen. “I suppose it’s my turn, hm?”

                Coming to understand the game, Felix took the shuffle of moment to flip them again. Craning up over Peter, the bizarre angle of looking down at him felt odd, with his cheeks flushed and his hair messed up, someone like him unraveling before him, and maybe even for him. All he could think to do, after pinning Peter down, was to grind their hips together, friction and heat and words shorting out the second they entered his skull.

                Or, nearly so. It almost looked like Felix had the upper hand. The upper hand in this game that required physicality and size, in these fits of violence and heat and need. Peter was content lying on the ground. With Felix leaving bruises on his neck and leaking onto each other. Jeans and shorts shoved awkwardly away.

                It was a moment of physicality, a moment of force and push and pull. The dark line of Felix’s vision, It was all earthy tones and firelit oranges and the imprint of Peter’s face behind his eyes. B

ut that all flashed white when Peter executed his spell. Tension, a hot strain behind Felix’s hips. The introduction of magic stopped the world in its tracks.

                The second Felix caught up was the second he broke off from the adoration he was licking into Peter’s collarbone. The second he looked back at his face, if only just to make contact.

                Peter’s voice rendered scratchy. It puffed up Felix’s pride just as much as it puffed up other parts of him. Peter was lying on his back with elegancies twisted all around them.

All he said was, “It could be fun.”  A beat, a pause, and he added in with the smallest slant to his eyes. “Don’t you think?”

Felix recognized the gleam in Peter’s eyes. Full of consideration and calculation. Peter already thought through all the outcomes and consequences of anything Felix could say. He was ready to jump in and redirect it to where Peter wanted it to go. But Felix thought they had a similar idea. Or, at least he hoped they did.

He lifted his grip on the ground and leaned back. It provided enough of a distraction. Peter’s eyes followed his chest away from him, and the strain from the magic inside Felix. He whimpered at the strain but tried to pull it back. Tried not to notice the snicker playing at Peter’s lips. By way of reply, he grinned and said, “Isn’t it your move, Peter?”

It was a challenge Peter was eager to accept. He was done fooling around and playing with this. The dynamic nothing near subtle.  He had Felix pressed into the floor in one second. In the next the magic rid them of barriers and clothes.

Felix caught himself thinking. Peter twisted warm frothy magic in him. And he was thinking of the sloppy sharp ways lips, teeth, and tongue introduced themselves to the fading darkness of the room.

                The first way, mapped in puncture marks, against skin and slithering together in lips bouncing off one another. In teeth grating against the saliva line on the inside of a mouth. The first way came with Peter crouched over him on the cool floor. Hands and knees pressing against a floor that hadn’t been swept all semester. His mouth laving from Felix’s mouth, sliding his open gape, down the column of his throat. Then his collarbone, chest, stomach. Tongue flicking once, twice, three times as means of punctuation. Felix twisting and sighing, expressive in ways he’d never imagine to be apart from the cold floor, in the presence of anyone but Peter. Hands scraping for purchase on hot soft skin. Wanting to scratch and take Peter’s hair in his hands.

                At least until Peter’s breath hit the head of his cock. Thought was, suddenly, less of a priority. His knees bent and one hand found Peter’s. Fingers sifting into the synapses, the easiest thing to reach. Peter led a trail of kisses that left him trembling, throbbing, aching at the caress of lips, the flicker of tongue and heat of breath. It left him shivering and wanting when Peter slunk away. His mouth threading a string as he pulled away. Foggy eyes, peering up from the landscape of their bodies, strewn around the floor. The peaks and plateaus of Felix’s trembling belly, cocked knees, trembling lonely erection over.

                “Shh,” Peter winked towards him, using his unoccupied hand to swallow down his thin index finger. In some kind of licentious preview and intention of seduction, hot flares bolted off in Felix’s stomach and chest and hips.  Fireworks in a fucking warzone. Peter capped off at the blunt fingernail.

He lowered himself again, swallowing around Felix, entrapping him in heat and ecstasy, the danger and intensity of the cavern of a mouth.  The same time he closed in, a single finger slid into place, meeting pressure and pushing through, shivers and happy little whimpers and…

Off. Abrupt. Antony thought it was like a record scratching. Lost Boy thought it was like an earthquake.

Damn near ready to groan, Felix looked up from his place on the floor. “What is it?” He leaned up on his good hand, ready to run or come nearer, or change subjects already despite the sweat building on his forehead and the demanding ache between his thighs.

Peter blinked. “Have you...done this before?”

Even though it was a question much more suited to a different time, a different time when he couldn’t feel everything against his skin and he just wanted to bask in heat and pressure of bodies, he nodded to the question. “Before Neverland, but yes.”

“Oh.” Peter’s eyes looked around, something turning in his head. Felix felt his pulse skyrocket from nowhere. Had he said something wrong?

Perhaps atonement could yet be earned, though. Squirming out and away from where he’d been splayed out before Peter, Felix cleared his throat, “Let me.”

Whatever strange gravity melded in between them lost itself again. Gravity forgotten and inconsequential as Peter pushed through to straddle Felix’s hips. Rolling hard against him, pulling him close, sending his heartbeat to every last extremity. Loosening his unbroken hand from Peter’s fingers, he slid it along the slope of his hip. The mix of warm flesh and lean muscle built the perfect silhouette for the perfect boy. Felix hoped he remembered how.

Hand wrapped around Peter, caress. Slid, skin dampening and sliding over and using his hand to its full length and capacity and watching Peter try so hard not to react. The one thing, in an entire new life of Peter Pan, he didn’t succeed in.

Maybe it was Banning coming through. Maybe it was Malcolm.

Maybe Peter was just the type not to hide the bursts of pleasure, not to muffle the sighs and groans into Felix’s mouth, but to express them and let them reverberate against his teeth, to roll them over before he comes and say, “Not yet.”

“Why not?” Felix panted, realizing it had all unfolded in real time and the sun broke through the windows and made everything look like gold blocks, coins, warm perfect stunning morning light. They’d made it through the night, got through this, the curse was theirs, they were theirs, it was all worth more than its weight in gold morning sunlight.

Peter quirked a brow. “Why do you want it to end?”

The response was automatic, no need to think or consider. So much like when he’d first returned to life, all he wanted to know was if Pan had won. He was lying on the cold floor, hard and leaking and holding onto Peter.  Mind recalling. Flashing, enjoying. The images of chasing down an enemy. Finally seeing the benefits.  Indulging the cursed mind that knew how this went, that had experienced it before. Racked by body that was angry this seemed to new and so familiar. No means of articulation, nerves and blood torn elsewhere. So what he said was “Why don’t you want a climax?”

Peter lifted himself off Felix’s hip. Mischievous and cunning, his grin sharp and almost painful to look at in the contradictorily pure light pouring in, when he said, “Roll over.”

When he obliged, he immediately felt Peter’s stomach press against his back.  Warm and gorgeous, lithe contours and damp sweat mixing.  All the fluids spilt and threaded through their bodies. A network of roots coming together to bring them both to life.

A contradiction stung in his mind as Peter pressed his fingers inside.  As a body, Felix trembles in novelty of being wanted, and being wanted like that. Of their friendship expanding into another form of reliance.  Relying on one another for pleasure and games and wanting to see what exhausted expression Peter would wear when it’s done.

His body knew he hadn’t fucked anyone, hardly even touched himself, in centuries. He bit his lip to keep from spilling over too soon with every hook and twitch of Peter’s hands. The extra blunt press of a second finger against his muscles. The stretch he hadn’t felt and hadn’t missed in centuries. Before, with whoever it was he’d been with, it hadn’t felt so good. Perhaps it was the magic. Perhaps it was Peter. Perhaps it was the confusion fogging his brain.

Even though it was new to his body, his form and muscles, his brain immediately pinned him down with the imposed memories. Of Felix Antony and Peter Banning spread across a comforter and laughing over how Peter kept on slipping out because they’d used too much lube. The time they got bored and used dice or flipping a coin to decide who would be fucked and who would be fucking. The false foggy memories added an air of familiarity. As though Felix Antony were within him, somehow, reminding him, _This is what Saturday nights are like - dinner, partying, fucking. This is normal._ And Felix Antony also reminding him they’d been fighting. How this was important. How the make up could keep them going. How this could function as a signpost at the end. How nervous that part of Felix was. As though, if he wasn’t good, Peter wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore.

And then there was the real part, injecting itself and trying to shut the falsehoods down. This wasn’t a make up. This wasn’t something they’d ever done before. This was Peter Pan and Felix, testing the waters. Deciding if this was the brand of friendship they wanted. This was Peter Pan and Felix, celebrating a night of event. They’d subdued the last enemy. The endorphins released when a fist hit a skull, the pheromones released when hips slapped together, physicality and friendship meeting in some new discovery of the things they could do.

Teeth caressing the shell of Felix’s ear, Peter used his hand to press the vein under Felix’s cock. He pushed it to his stomach. Sensory overload from behind, from front. With another spell of slickness, Peter lined himself up and rocked forward. Felix steepling and reacting and falling in love with the sensation.  Kowtowing. Ass up face down. Basking in the feeling as Peter groaned. Long stringy vowels, collecting the pressure and surging forward. It built him up. Made him warm. Hot and bothered and in pursuit of fire, from the outside in.

Felix remembered, too late, that their cursed selves kept lubricant in the bedside table, but Peter used his magic to provide a gorgeous mess of slide and a hiss of friction to keep them going. They connected back to chest. Felix’s legs quivered trying to support all his weight. Peter’s hand crushed over his good knuckle. His broken wrist ineffectual and sore and unable to introduce anything but the gorgeous flick of pain into the mess of repetition.

Peter’s breath in his ear and his teeth on his neck as it wrung him out and pushed him till both their breaking points spit over like a crack in a dam. Unleashed and spent and sticky and pressed against their bodies.

Felix could feel Peter’s forehead, damp with their sweat, linger in the valley between his shoulder blades. Peter kissed it once before it was over. He pulled out and raked his hands through his hair and sat down on the floor behind Felix. He pulled a sour face, out of nowhere, and Felix could feel his stomach drop at the expression. But all he said was “The floor’s cold.”

“It’s better under me,” Felix scooted over without being asked. He frowned at the sudden punch of cold tile under him. Peter shuffled, inelegant and sleepily, to the place where they’d warmed the floor.

“Next time we should put a blanket down,” Peter mumbled, sour faced at the temperature not catering to his every whim. “Or do it on the bed or futon or something.”

“Next time?” Felix repeated, body exhausted but starting to hum at the idea.

Peter’s lips twisted into a cunning grin, and he flashed a playful wink in Felix’s direction. “I’d say the trial run was a success. Wouldn’t you?”

There weren’t any words ready in Felix’s mind. None articulate enough or intelligent enough to emphasize his agreement. He answered by physical means.

And, when Peter reacted favorably, pressing lips and fluttering his tongue in the spaces between Felix’s lips, Felix couldn’t help but let his quiver of excitement flare.  At the sudden fluency in one another’s body language. Another all-encompassing reason his life turned on the axis of this boy, his moods and his plans. And, of course, he thought, exhaustedly slumping into bed without a word, lying beside Peter on the bottom bunk, their curse.


	6. Chapter 6

                For what it was worth, handmade casts never itched as much as the modern plaster ones. Peter had said a plaster cast would attract less attention but, thus far, Nick and Tom and even Wendy Darling had asked how he broke his wrist.  And no sooner had they slid into a booth at Granny’s than they had to add Ruby to the list.

                “Damn, Felix, what happened?” She asked, placing Felix’s coffee in front of him and thrusting Peter’s onto the table.

                Felix shrugged in as much of a mimicry of nonchalance as he could. “Broke my wrist.”

                “I can see that,” Ruby replied, eyes swiveling over the table, from their untouched menus to Felix to Peter and the tray in her hand. Friendly smile on her face, she wrinkled her nose. “Want me to sign your cast?”

                Peter brought his mug to his lips, and Felix couldn’t stop his jaw from going slack. “...no thanks.”

“God, everyone’s getting hurt.” Ruby shook her head, looking overwhelmed by the news, “Did you hear Tink ran over Killian Jones in his car last night?”

                Felix had to suppress the snicker threatening to rise from his throat. Sometimes fate could be poetic. Instead of letting his commentary through, Felix said, “Oh?”

                “Yeah. Killian was in _real_ bad shape. The ambulance got to him in time, though, he’ll be fine.”

                Biting back the growl of disappointment in his chest, Felix bit into his egg.

“But the weird thing is, not all his injuries seem to be related. But he was drunk and the car didn’t seem to help. He can’t remember a thing.”

                If nothing else, at least he and Peter were in the clear. Not that Felix was worried, but the confirmation was soothing.

                “He says he’s not gonna press charges, but you never know with him,” Ruby shrugged. She sighed, “Y’know what’s kinda awful?”

                “Probably,” Felix replied, snickering when Ruby shot a sharp glare his way.

                “It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for him,” Ruby began. Felix discarded her disclaimer. “But it just got me thinking...Tink’s got a smart car, and he was really beat up. It just...feels off to me, y’know?”

                Felix did know, and he knew why. But he had a responsibility to keep the illusion of the curse. No matter how much Ruby had grown on him. “Not really, no.”

                From across the table, Peter furrowed his brows and put his cup down on the table. “Is this decaf?”

                Ruby pressed her lips together. “Did you _order_ decaf?”

                “No.”

                “Then no.” Ruby pressed her tray over her hip. “Anyway, regular breakfasts?”

“What else?”

“I’ll get that right out for you,” Ruby said, voice paper-thin and pivoting away.

No sooner had she disappeared into the kitchen than Peter turned back to the window. If it was an expression Peter wore at all well, Felix might have thought he was pouting rather than thinking.

“Peter, I wouldn’t go planning revenge.”

To this, Peter scoffed and threw an elbow back onto the sill. “Where’d you go thinking I’d be planning revenge?”

“You’re predictable.” He answered without thinking about it and regretted the ease of his reply. Ears and the bridge of his nose must have flushed scarlet.

“Am I?” Peter leaned forward, “Tell me, Felix, what will I do next?”

“Most likely, you’ll kick me under the table.”

Maybe it was just the high of the moment, but he could feel the momentum of Peter’s leg under the tablecloth.  Rather than slam it against Felix’s shin, he rested his foot on the laces of Felix’s sneakers. A sly and cocky grin on his face, he said, “You shouldn’t go assuming.”

“You’re being contrary. That much is predictable.”

“You didn’t say that.”

Felix declined to answer, only smiled a little to himself and gazed out the window. He watched a silver Jetta get a parking ticket. All the cars that passed behind the scene. Layers upon layers. All inconsequential events, to create the backdrop for whatever would conspire during the day.

Peter lifted his foot off Felix’s laces, and he knew better than to assume Peter was done with it. But it surprised him when his foot came back, batting on the inside of his ankle. Bumping along on the protruding bone there, the rubber of his soles hitting the skeleton.

“Yes, Peter?”

“What?” Peter blinked, as though he didn’t know what he was doing. And to Felix’s straight-laced expression, he slid his shoe along the lean line of Felix’s shin. Hooking around to the calf, he said, “You’re acting odd.”

Felix sat still, lifting his coffee to his lips, and felt Peter’s foot slide up around his calf. Peter probably wasn’t dedicated enough to make it all the way up his leg, it might take a while considering how they went on for miles. But if he would, what on earth was his endgame here? He’d only made it part of the way up Felix’s shin when Peter stretched, the picture of nonchalance, moseying his way up to the end of his booth to get more room.

“Seriously, Felix,” Peter repeated, continuing his trek to cap over Felix’s knee. He sat still as a rock from the waist up. Nobody around would realize his own leg was straight as a pin and fluttering mischievously underneath. “Are you ill?”

Chortling, letting the sweet fumes of fixed coffee slide up into his nostrils, he said, “What would you prescribe if I were?”

“It’s an itch,” Peter said, shrugging easily above table as he took a sip of his own drink, underneath his leg had somehow made it to Felix’s thigh. “Scratch it.”

“Here?”

“Why not?”

Felix let his eyes swing over the patrons inside, corner to corner. The place was a hub of activity. Grown adults sat on breakfast dates. Friends reunited. Elderly people wagged their fingers at disgruntled waitresses and waiters. Forks scraped against plates.

                “The entire Enchanted Forest is here.”.

                Resting his foot, probably reaching the end of where he could physically batter, Peter leaned his head on his knuckles. His eyes sparked with jest and humor.  Felix couldn’t tell if it translated, under all those layers of enjoyment, to a legitimate request.

“Not into exhibition? I would’ve expected the opposite.”

 A few of the Merry Men who had kept watch over Felix in his cell slumped over the bar. Police vests bulged under their beer guts. Equipment belts slouched on their hips.

The next table over, a collective of students hovered over each other. Simon and Ig and Wendy and Aaya and two or three more Felix didn’t recognize by name but he’d saw them at the party. They all looked tired, chugging away at the biggest mugs Granny’s Diner had to offer, slumped over tables with elbows in the syrup.

                “Not before noon,” Felix said, gruffly. He took his good hand to cover the curve of Peter’s ankle, soft skin, delicate slope. His eyes continued to scan around the company, just to see who was in the diner. They were packed. What was it about Granny’s that made people like it so much, even then? “Or around so much food.”   

Henry Mills sat alone in a booth with a mug of something and a plate of pancakes. Something was off about their former Believer. Perhaps a new haircut? Some minute detail Felix couldn’t take in name but was able to sense nonetheless? He had a textbook in front of him and a calculator off to the side. A familiar sour expression on his face. The same one he wore whenever the Lost Boys tried to get him to play. Felix had to wonder, if he didn’t like games and he didn’t like math, what _did_ he like?

John and Michael Darling sat across from each other with bowls of oatmeal untouched, clanking away at their laptops. Felix had to wonder what kinds of lives they were leading now that their century-long endeavor was over with. It’d have to be left to wonderment, though, lest Peter think he was actually _concerned._

After all, it was a curse. Everyone seemed all right, just stuck in Americano Hell. Nothing fulfilled, always more to be had, but obligations and work held you down from the things you wanted. There was nothing less Neverland about it.

From across the table, Peter stopped his pursuit up Felix’s leg, but kept his foot there, joining his friend in the survey of the room. He didn’t want to be too quiet, though. Following the line of his eyes, looking at what Felix was looking at, he grinned. “It looks like victory, doesn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Felix let his eyes swish over to the Savior with her blonde hair tied back. She was chewing absently on a bear claw and not even noticing Henry in his corner.

“They’re just so wrapped up in their own worlds; they’re in the middle of something extraordinary and they don’t even know. That’s how far gone they are. It’s a curse, meant to make people suffer, but they don’t suffer because they don’t know what they’re missing.”

“Isn’t that kind of a lousy curse?”

“A life of mediocrity can be something of a hell in itself. Thirty-seven years was enough for me.”   
                “Still. “

“Yes. It’s obvious that the aim of the curse, wasn’t actually the curse. But,” Peter said with a lilt to his brow and a lift to his coffee cup, “Here’s to making the best of every situation.”

Felix lifted his drink. A cause he could get behind.

Before their conversation could continue, the front door swung open. The bell above tinkled, and Regina Mills swooped in. She might not have been a Queen anymore, but she still had a way of commanding a room. A sort of regal attitude about the way she lifted her nose. Felix instantly remembered why he hated her. She’d kept Henry away from them. Kept Peter from taking Henry’s hear. She spoiled everything.  

No such luck then, though. She’d crossed the diner with purpose till she reached Henry’s lonely little corner.

“Come on, _mijo_ ,” She said evenly. “It’s time for your fitting appointment.”

Henry sighed exasperatedly but shut his textbook nonetheless. “Why do we have that appointment again?”

“Because you outgrew your uniform,a” She said simply. “Your khakis fit like capris.” 

“Okay, be right there,”  Henry mumbled stuffing his book into his backpack. Wordlessly, he followed his mother with her dangerous heels.

Both Felix and Peter followed them out with their eyes. When Felix spun around to see Peter’s reaction, jaw slackened and wide-eyed. He could have sworn he saw Peter, with his elbows on the table and coffee held in front of his nose, beaming into his mug.

                Ruby returned with their plates. She  placed and tossed them onto the table with the same delicacy she had with their coffees. Peter didn’t seem to take it personally, though as he gazed dreamily out the window. Outside, at the people in bright orange vests with jackhammers. They were installing more parking meters.

                Without looking Peter in the eye, Felix found the gumption within him to ask, “Why?”

                “Why what?” Peter returned, voice lighter and less severe. It was edged with a line of contentment. Perhaps it was not fully there, but the silhouette lingered.

                “Why are you aging him? I thought this was about lives of mediocrity.”

                “Some people just don’t do mediocre.”

                “Doesn’t that make him dangerous?”

                Waving a flippant hand, Peter scrunched his nose. It was endearing, despite everything. “He’ll be just as much of a threat at eighteen as he is at eleven. Which is to say, not.”

                Cutting into his eggs, Felix watched as the yolk bled through his incision. The thick gooey yellow coating over the hills of frozen white. Meandering its slow way to the center of his plate. “If you insist,” He mumbled, unsure why the concept that Peter wanted more than they already had pricked at him so badly. It was hypocritical, he knew, because he could agree. It wasn’t enough to know that the curse was happening, that they were the only ones who knew, they needed intrigue and adventure. Peter needed to have his proof and his trophy; fine. Felix needed to be able to slip into greenhouses. Or toss a FrisBee or watch a baseball game with Tod and Copper or Ruby. He needed people to care for. People who weren’t so far above everyone else. No matter what a blessing that was.

                Because, Peter was too incredible to count. Being with Peter was something else entirely. He always set Felix’s stomach into jitters and his face would ache from his contentment. However, Peter was in his own category. He always had been.

           

* * *

 

 

_“You’ve got the job,” Eugenia Lucas says, plain as day, outstretched hand thrust before her._

_And Felix isn’t used to being accepted so quickly, so he’s too slow on the uptake. “Don’t you want to check my references or something…”_

_“Kid, you’ll be a good worker. I’m a pro at interviewing. You did well, take the handshake and I’ll tour you around.”_

_“Um, thank you, Mrs. Lucas.” Felix replies, sheepishly taking her hand. He hates handshakes. Nobody had ever taught him how to do the manly-firm-grip thing._

_“Call me Granny,” She says, as though that’s normal. Standing up from the table, the tour started in the kitchen. “Since you’re starting with bussing, the only thing you really need to know back here is the sinks, and here’s protocol…”_

 

_He fits in at Granny’s, learns how to make a bed in twenty seconds flat, and within a week gets the O.K to brew coffee. Within two, he’s meeting Ruby by the library every morning to go for a jog._

 

_It’s nice, this restaurant and hotel, how hands-on the owners are. Sure, there’s a finnicky manager in the hotel portio. A nervous kind man with tremendously hairy legs. He’s called Mr. Tumnus. There’s the sous-chef (Nikki). She often runs the kitchen all by herself while Granny’s taking care of her business. But so often, Granny’s down in the kitchen, making food and chatting with the customers. It’d be so easy to disappear and let the other people take care of everything. But Granny takes pride and joy in her business. No wonder it manages to stand alone in a growing city with its emerging Olive Gardens and Holiday Inns._

_There’s a new busboy named Tod at work. He and Felix hit it off over one disgruntled patron who refused to tip because his steaming plate of eggs was cold. Tod gets promoted faster than Felix, and Felix finds that he’s genuinely pleased for him._

 

_Granny has a heart-attack at three in the morning. Felix rushes to the hospital as soon as he hears. He waits for the result, bouncing his leg next to Ruby. They’re worried,  and can’t find words between them. The doctor comes out and tells them Granny will be okay._

 

_He eats Thanksgiving with the Lucases and loses $24 when they bet on the football games._

 

_He sleeps over at the hotel one night, throbbing black eye the shape of his stepfather’s fist. He hates running away, but sometimes, it’s the only thing to do. At least he’s got a place to run to._

 

_Felix tries kissing Ruby at the staff Christmas party, just to see if he likes kissing girls. He doesn’t. They both pull away the second their lips touch with an abrupt and simultaneous “No.”_

_Ruby laughs at how immediate the revulsion was and says, “I assume I know your verdict, Mr. Antony.”_

_And Felix smiles, says, “You don’t make the cut, Lucas. Do you have a brother?”_

_He smiles but he doesn’t know how he can possibly have a future. He doesn’t know how this will work. If there’s a future out there waiting for him. Storybrooke City hasn’t provided him with examples. He doesn’t know how to blaze a trail himself. But there’s no reason to worry his friend over it, even if his fingers start shaking._

 

_Flora and Fauna Gold get married, he sees it in the papers, and suddenly, it’s not so scary._

 

_When Felix signs the paperwork for termination of employment at Granny’s. It’s only so he can focus on his schoolwork. Still, feels like he’s lacerating every good twist and turn he’s accepted into his life._

 

 

* * *

 

                Ruby dove over, as though she smelled it, the second Felix found himself alone at the table. Peter had gone to the washroom, and it was likely that they only had a few moments to chat. A gravity that seemed to weigh in on the taut line of lipstick stretched over Ruby’s mouth.

                “Okay, seriously, what happened to your wrist?”

                Felix blinked. “I told you already.”

                “And you’re being honest?”

                “Why wouldn’t I be?”

                Ruby looked at him, a tilt in her face. Something about it made the hairs on Felix’s neck stand on edge. He didn’t need to be evaluated by someone who hadn’t yet proved she was qualified to evaluate him. Especially after she’d always been so friendly. “Because I don’t get you right now.” She shifted her voice to a loud whisper. Felix didn’t find much change in volume. “You show up at my place, tell me that it felt like Peter ripped your heart out of your chest--”

                Felix froze. He could feel every organ in his body seize up, tense. 

                “And that it was over. Two days later, you’re walking around like nothing’s changed. There’s a rumor that someone saw you _running from the police_ and now you’ve got a broken wrist.” She extended her hand over the table, it might have been a comforting gesture, had it been from someone Felix felt he knew better. “I just want to know if you’re okay.”

                “I’m fine.”

                The words stuck and lingered on the back of his throat. But he was. He was fine. They moved on repeat when he got back to the dorm room. When he and Peter rolled onto the futon in a messy tangle of limbs. When they snuck their hands under their clothes and could feel the hot soft skin and pressure building. When the clothes came off and his tongue traced its way along all of Peter’s contours, tasting his skin and his salt.

                The way Peter’s shoulders arced along the cheap padding on the futon. Gorgeous bunching up of muscles and nerves, his knees flung around Felix’s shoulders. Soles of his feet hitting the knobs in Peter’s spine, his mouth starting on Peter’s. Hands spreading fanning out to feel him, as though he were just as tangible as the Northern Lights. And he was  just as much of an impossible phenomena. As though Felix thought he’d wake up any moment. That this was all just an elaborate dream and he’d never really touched Peter at all.

                His hands spun in circles, over ribs and legs and one keeping balance. One snug in between Peter’s fingers, not even realizing that his break had been healed. Magic kept him in the best shape, perhaps so he could be satisfying there, in that room.

                And his lips traced down Peter’s face, to the bobbing stiff column on his throat. He pulled his lips back and grazed his teeth along Peter’s throat. Skin bristling with the sensation, the mimicry of battles and fighting and the low groan. Unheard words that vibrated in Felix’s mouth the moment Peter said them, till he descended and lingered on Peter’s chest. Flat plain, beautiful and perfect for the fact they housed his heart, his lungs, his stomach and liver. All the things Felix didn’t think of Peter as having, but that he could feel the effects of their efforts brushing up against his skin.

                Hot and moving and Peter laced his hands in his hair, but did not tug one way or another. Accepting the laudation of his body, unsurprised but keening into the way Felix kissed his skin.  Mouth open, laving, loving, collected together and purposely bumping his shoulder against Peter’s erection. A promise that, yes, he’d get to that too.

                Peter’s hands scraped down at Felix’s shoulders, praise and pain and reaching what little he could as Felix fixed in on his abdomen. Fingers caressed the line of hair from his navel and moved downwards. Building up the feeling and sinking further from arm’s reach, but caught between Peter’s legs as he anchored in and made good on his promise. The curve of Peter’s cock fitting, cramming its own space, in Felix’s throat. Hands sticky with sweat, intertwined or leaving hand prints on scratchy material.

                Peter groans and draws tight on skin. He  gasped for breath. Felix’s tongue flicked against skin that was used to being unexposed. Sensitive under the foreskin, they could both smell the coffee and the cigarettes.

                Swallowing down as Peter began to buck and hiss, Felix repeated the thought, in spite of himself: _I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine._

 

* * *

 

 

                 The grating din of construction was faded into white noise. The scent of gasoline deemed ‘normal’ in the air. The idea of driving through town with all the trucks and scaffolding promised to be the most annoying endeavor you’d ever attempt.

It was his first Monday in this second life, and he had his first class with Peter: _PSCI 250: Current Events & Local Politics _with Edwin Ruga. They’d filed into the lecture hall quietly, Felix and Peter, sizing up the rest of their classmates. Felix recognized a few sleepy Lost Ones, a handful of the Natives clustered together in the front corner of the lecture. For the past century or so whenever Felix was around people he didn’t know, it meant war. He swallowed down the impulse to pull a weapon. It wasn’t like he had a knife in his pocket; he was helpless inside the lecture hall, nothing but rows and rows of seats around him.

                Peter sat down with a small sigh into the seat, jostling his hips to get comfortable. When Felix sat beside him, bending his gangly legs in towards his chest to fit in the narrow space between seats, Peter turned to him. He whispered, “We’ve got this class with the former Red King of Wonderland. Should be interesting. I love to see royals cut down to size.”

                Felix snickered and leaned back to mirror Peter’s ease.  The ceiling domed up and surrounded him on all sides, there weren’t even any windows. People learned in this environment? Felix took a moment to wonder how. And then, with a flourish and a tossing eye-roll from Peter, the professor flounced through the door and to the front of the classroom.

Professor Ruga was a tall, monotone man with grey hair and a stiff posture. It was something of a puzzlement Peter’s curse involved going to class - for _him,_ seemed like enough of a curse for the rest of them _._ Peter had begun to space off, scribbling music notes in a lined notebook, and tapping with a pencil. It was a nice beat.

Ruga stood before the classroom, nose pointed up and condescension in his puffed chest. “And so what this article is saying is the reason small towns stagnate and stay where they are, is a fear of improvement. So to speak, people generally lack the drive to be more than they are. When it comes to large scale development, who deserves to decide if a place is fit for improvement?”

                Directing his attention away from the lecture, Felix watched the  snarls in people’s hair in front of him. Watched their languid posture, rows and rows of sleepless, tired, shells of people just going through the motions.

                Beside him, Peter placed a scrap of paper on Felix’s desk. A scratchy unpracticed handwriting, reading, _you think he’d be more interesting if I gave him a tail?_

Felix snickered and folded the paper in one hand, returned with his answer: _No._

Peter turned back to the lecture, snickering under his breath.

                From the front of the classroom, Professor Ruga circled around his desk. “Anything?”

                A blonde girl in front of Felix raised her hand,

                “Yes, Miss…”

                “Anastasia Tremaine,” The girl said, voice sultry and tentative. “Some people only need so much. They rely on ‘the village,’ so to speak. Um...I guess, what I’m trying to say is, why force progress when you can just leave if big and grand is what you need.”

                Professor Ruga pressed his thin lips together, something flaring in his eyes when they collided with the girl in the seat. “Do you want ‘big’ and ‘grand?’ Do you - yourself - have progress on your mind?”

                “Of course,” Anastasia Tremaine said. Lightening the depth of her words she laughed, “I'm in a classroom, aren’t I?”

                “You are. Are you from Storybrooke?”

                “Most of us are.” 

                “Then why are you here instead of going off and having new experiences? Why should a family and community that doesn’t want to move forward prevent those who do?” Professor Ruga said, meaningfully. Abruptly, then, he broke off. “Other opinions?”

                Felix looked around the lecture hall, eyeing the way some people slouched like they didn’t care.  Some drew circles around, some stared at the ceiling praying to the lightbulbs that Professor Ruga wouldn’t call on them.  It might’ve been an interesting argument, if only Felix felt one way or another about it. Peter had magic, Peter would make sure, no matter how this ended, it ended right. Expand Storybrooke into a big city with cinemas and casinos, leave it as a spec on the map, what did it matter to Felix?

                It was almost pathetic. These people and their priorities.

 

 

* * *

 

               

                Even if Peter  never went to class, he’d reset every year.  All that specific paper-pushing rot and “academic standing” would slip into the void and stack up to exactly nothing. It didn’t matter if he showed up to his music theory class, but he did. Not because he didn’t want to be alone in the dorm room, but because he’d heard a few people talking about Dr. Sebastian. He wanted to see what the fuss was about. There was a boy in class who looked like he could be fun, who just wanted to play music and dance and enjoy his major. But there was something about rich boys like Naveen Faldonza that irritated him. Felix never acted like that. Not even at the beginning when he was still used to silks and gold threads and could barely speak the language without magical help. Naveen, on the other hand, threw out expressions and didn’t even bother to take lecture notes on his fancy new iPad. Not that Peter was taking notes either; it was the principle of the thing.

 

 

 

                Felix hadn’t enjoyed his lessons in his life before Neverland. He’d been  forced to sit in stuffy rooms and transcribe and perfect his handwriting.  Or to study business records and the languages of the family’s most prominent trading partners. Something about this though, something about the lecture hall and collective energy forward. Something about scribbling notes and knowing he wouldn’t get slapped if his letters weren’t all the same size. He’d be safe if he mixed up the dative and genitive cases trying to ask about hunting dogs. His instructors were there to give information or to open a conversation where everyone got their say. There was focus and specific subjects and problem solving.  Iif anyone were to force themselves to take classes and learn from self-proclaimed superiors, this would be the way to do it.

 

 

Peter’s class had been halfway decent. Dr. Sebastian was an entertaining man, short with a shining bald head glimmering under the lights. He had a heavy Jamaican accent and a fussiness about him that looked like it’d be fun to mess with. And it was funny, at first, when he deviated into talking about his weekend, but once the lecture started, he’d zoned out. But he managed to make something out of it. He’d improved the bridge of the song he was working on over the weekend. College could be fun, he thought, just as long as you looked at it the right way, and got out of classes early.

 

* * *

 

 

                The rest of the day was a blur for Felix. He’d had to move quickly from the second the lecture hall opened to move from one side of campus to the other. First to the science building and then back to the arts and humanities. He sat near to the front in botany,. Spent the hour taring up at the front and scribbling notes with Tod and Copper and Rosie. They’d all sat beside him of their own volition.

Next was Banned Books.  Felix hadn’t participated in the discussion about the wavering banned status of _Brave New World,_ there was something half-enjoyable about listening to other people consider texts laid out in front of them. They were looking through it for meaning, rather than just effect.

At least until  Dr. Fflewddur Fflam stood up, straightened his coat and said, “For Wednesday, we’ll be looking at Homeric tradition. While not outright _banned_ in most cases, _certainly_ censored. We’ll read a translation of _The Iliad_ for Wednesday. This is not on your syllabus,” He began fiddling with the buttons on his waistcoat, finding several of them missing. “But the student recreational center is showing that one adaption with Brad Pitt in it on Wednesday. And I thought it would be a good time to compare censorship with outright forbidding the works themselves. So we won’t be reading _1984_ for Wednesday or _Beloved_ for Friday. Have to make room for the Iliad all this week. Which means our dystopian unit is ending abruptly. We’ll start our unit on women with _The Color Purple_ for Monday and go right into _Lolita_ on Wednesday. Sound good?”

                The class didn’t reply, but Dr. Fflam didn’t seem to notice for the way he clapped his hands. “Excellent,” Returning to the table up front, he pulled out a stack of paper. “Now, we have about twenty more minutes of class, let’s get familiar with the atmosphere that The Iliad was told in. I have four different myths, take one packet and pass the rest back, read one and put your pencil down when you’re done. Again, these stories are usually not banned, but censored. Read your story, and we’ll come back and speculate why that is.”

 

                Serving human flesh on a dinner plate. That was the reason the myth Felix had to read was censored. His was about a king named Tantalus, who murdered his own son and attempted to serve him to the pantheon of gods for supper. When he died, he was sentenced to Tartarus. His sentence was to stand chin-deep in water and with fruit hanging overhead. The water would recede and the tree would pull away in a moment if he were to try to eat or drink, only to be restored the moment he sprang back in place, eternally torturing him with the idea of food or drink. The punishment in the form of his frustration that he could not satisfy his basic needs. 

                He did not speak when they turned to discussion. His classmates covered the bases for his myth. The rest was listening to the other groups give their synopses and speculations. And, for the most part, their reason for censorship was obvious, though Felix didn’t find them too shocking. Pasiphae. Oedipus. Heracles’ labors. They were _unpleasant_ at the most. But why did anyone go through the trouble to make the idea of _reading a story_ more rebellious, exciting just because it was banned? What was the point? It only sufficed to make the stories more, for lack of a better word, tantalizing.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 Kerosine. Matches. The perfect cover of the blackest night. Every last person’s attention concentrated on some half-assed attraction downtown. Nobody would see.  Felix slunk in the shadows and kept one eye over his shoulder at all times. If push came to shove, he wouldn’t _need_ it, Peter’s magic could get anyone to look the other way. But he wouldn’t be a nuisance, he couldn’t depend on that. If he started to, Peter would be completely within his rights to take it away. He’d have to be willing to take his missteps by himself.

Peter watched with resigned interest. He leaned against the shrubs as Felix doused a ground-floor windowsill. Looked bored when Felix splashed some chemical inside the open window, through the screen. Hopefully it’d hit an electrical wire or a bookshelf or something that would conduct the fire.

 

 

 

After City Hall went up in flames, they’d run to the woods and watch through the screen of trees. Their tent was set up, looked like they’d been camping a few days. Their cover and albi.

It was all so simple, so mechanical, but the hum in Felix’s brain told him this was more than that. Felix’s heart lurched, fight or flight got a new brother: burn. He struck a match against the flimsy black strip. The flame burst, against the stick, beautiful and raging up.  It soaked him to the brim with potential and stammering euphoria.

The greatest act of defiance Felix Antony could come up with, just another Tuesday, a fun game he enjoyed for Felix the Lost Boy. And this odd mid-placed person he’d become, would just enjoy the ride.

            Dropping the match into the grass, Felix ran back as fast as he could.  By the time he turned around, the entire side of the building was up in flames. And Peter bolted back behind him, overtaking on foot in seconds.

                Just like that, they’d created chaos.

                Sirens ruined the crackle of fire, the miracle of cinders spitting from the tall flames, alarms and blaring noises. Couldn’t they just enjoy the sight of a white-laced building aflame?

                No, apparently not.

                “Time to go,” Peter said, evenly, pivoting on his heels to rush back to their makeshift campsite.

                The blood pumped through Felix’s veins as he ran, half a pace behind Peter. Excitable and riding the high of a moment.  Feeling every molecule of air while he tended to their own campfire. The precaution -just in case someone came by. They had to make something believable from the way the ash clung to the firewood.

The flames licked up, crackling under the sound of sirens on the other side of the trees. But it was the sound of Peter - a small groan, hissing over the sound of it all that caught his attention. Looking up, his jaw dropped as Peter Pan moved into view, holding in his arm, teeth bared in a hiss.

Felix eyes flickered down, to the angry red blisters, peeling skin, yellowing skin on contact.

“Peter….” Felix gaped, unable to tear his eyes from the open wound, the labor in Peter’s breath. Never before had he seen him so...un-strong.

“It’s…” Peter sucked in air through his teeth. “Fine.”

“I hurt you,” Felix couldn’t feel his hands, his feet, anything but the sudden chatter in his teeth; he never thought he could.

Testily, then, “The _fire_ hurt me. Don’t be dramatic.”

“We have water,” Felix thought, one track mind throbbing through his greymatter, “Let me help.”

“I’m fine.”

“Peter, you’re hurt.”

“I’m _fine.”_ Peter hissed, still contradicting himself by the way he grasped onto his arm. “Give me a fucking second.”

Felix was shaking, he couldn’t stop it, fingers twitching, the impossibility of it all. He only ever got fleeting glimpses of Peter at anything less than perfect shape. The struggle, the effort, for physical health, was the most disturbing thing he’d seen in a long time.

But Peter spit onto his own wound. He inhaled from his nose, and watched with a content gleam in his eyes as the burn shrunk. It shriveled smaller and smaller, till his skin was perfect, and unbroken again. All except for the puckered scar slicing through his palm.

“There,” He said. “Good as new.”

For all intents and purposes, it should have been over and done with. But Felix’s fingers wouldn’t stop shaking.

“ _What?”_

“It doesn’t make sense,” Felix mumbled, turning back to the campfire. “You got hurt.”

“Why? I’m flesh and blood, aren’t I?”

“You’re in control of everything, it’s your curse.” Felix couldn’t help himself, hugged his knees into his chest.  “How could that happen?”

“I don’t control fire,” Peter snapped. “Or the weather. I just blur reality for everyone else. Don’t get in over your head with blind faith.”

Quiet, trembling stilling as the conclusion came together in Felix’s mind. He swallowed, slowly, “You said this would be new Neverland. It isn’t.”

Peter sighed. “Are you _still_ on about that?”

“You promised.”

Tongue slipping out between Peter’s lips, he looked up to the sky, behind himself at the bright red firetrucks on the other side on the trees. “No,” He said sourly. “It’s not.”

Felix turned away from Peter, to look into the curling contained flame, away from the crowds gathering around the fire. “It’ll never be Neverland. Will it?”

Peter’s silence was enough to garner eye contact. Green, deep, fogged over and so different than his usual microscope. His magic, his centuries of calculation, fragmented  like the shards of broken window.

The fire spit embers. Peter leaned his knuckles on his temples. “It doesn’t appear so. No.”

“So how does this end?”

“It ends when we win.”

Felix wanted to ask if that was possible. If adding more and more people --  If  bringing Henry -- If fighting in the street and defacing and destroying property--- if  placebos and momentary highs that evaporatelike a shallow puddle in the heart of a desert - make it worth it. But, instead, he asked, “Haven’t we already?”

“Are _you_ satisfied?”

Tugging on the back of his neck, Felix looked towards him. Familiarity, friendship, centuries of knowing him. His predictability, something on a new plane, edging nothing….

“We’re getting there.”

“Exactly.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

                They arrived at the Rabbit Hole, one week later, with skin and blood under their fingernails.  Blurry haze of endorphins bounced off the walls of their craniums. Fuzzy, murky, humming, bopping from one side to the other as they sauntered to the bar.

                “One of these days,” A patron hidden in the dark said, too afraid to show his face and make a statement of it, “They’ll start carding.”

                Peter sipped on his gin and tonic and thought, _No they won’t._

Felix followed him into a booth over by the pool tables. Ruby and Lacey were already there. They were warming up, downing mugs of beer and laughing as they covered each other’s backs to “improve” the other’s shot. Slipping hands here or there when they did so.

                Eyes scanning around the bar, Peter kept his eyes on the buzz of people. How they traipsed from here or there with the bizarre hope to make more of their small life. Trying to catch a scent of drunken happiness for a moment. Grasping at the pieces before them, trying to make it together without acknowledging that a few were missing, hidden in Peter Pan’s pocket. Subtle lordship they didn’t recognize, they ignored.

                But if the red streaks on his stomach and Felix’s back were any indication, at least he wasn’t ignored by everyone, all the time. Life got so lonely without a friend to appreciate him or a game to play.

                “What’s on your mind?” Felix asked, as Peter continued to look out over the bar, watching people scramble for something resembling a good time.

 “Just looking around for our friends.”

                It’d been a long time since ‘our friends’ meant the Lost Boys. But the image still stuck to Peter’s brain. He wondered if it still stuck to Felix’s, or if he’d effectively transferred it into the new model, just by association.

                Someone selected a song on the jukebox. Lacey groaned at the song, slurring out a complaint about “the shitty taste in music around this city.” She had to use the pool stick for balance.

                Peter raked a hand through his hair, balanced his chin on his knuckles.  “Think I’ve got enough time to pick her pocket?”

                “Ruby’ll see you. She’s staying sober,” Felix said, indicating with her hand how the taller woman had been nursing her drink and how her gait was steady. “Besides, they come here enough, they know to keep their I.D and credit cards under their shirts.”

                Peter sighed, leaning back in the booth. “That’s not fair. Hiding it where it’d be impossible to get, unless you want to make a scene.”

                “Fair is making it easier to steal from?” Felix’s voice tinged with amusement, warm and admirable despite the context.

Peter soaked in the adoration, but kept his face free of any indication. “ _Fair_ is a word I don’t think most women know.”

Felix paused. “Does...does she remind you of her?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

He only ever got that look on his face - drawn tight, dark in the eyes, grievous self-pity - about one woman. “No,” Peter said, shaking his head. “ _She_ was more like Wendy, if you really must know.”

“I know.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t get like that. She left me with a baby, I’m hardly going to make _that_ mistake again.” The air was tense as his cat’s cradles, the motion when you pull through to reveal the new shape. Time to change the configuration. Hooking his foot around Felix’s ankle, he scooted closer on the booth. “But the question, to me, is why you thought Lacey would remind me of her?”

“You were staring,” Felix said plainly, dipping a mozzarella stick into the marinara sauce. Distractedly, he added, “And it would be….poetic, in that way you like so much. To keep Rumple down.”

“There’s an idea. But, I think I like my current arrangement.”  Peter chuckled, slid closer still and sliding his teeth over the shell of Felix’s ear, hand on the skinny thigh in front of him.

And, just like that, the subject returned to the backdrop. Where it belonged, where he didn’t have to question his adamance of making Rumple’s life a living hell. At the time he’d cast the curse -- of course he had. If the spell hadn’t taken over so quickly, who knew what Peter would have done? But time and reflection and homeostasis were powerful things. And, at that point, Peter had made his resolve. He wanted his son cursed, wanted him to stay put and out of his hair. But  he didn’t want him dead, and he didn’t want his soul tortured, especially if he didn’t know why. That was always the hardest thing -- to have a soul, to feel it strung up on a rack, and not know why. Felix didn’t seem to understand the balance. Which was fine. Peter always had fun scraping the naivete from Felix’s skin.

“Oh, c’mon guys, get a room!”

The voice materialized in front of them, they both spun out to find Tod and Copper sliding into the opposite bench, shaking their heads. Copper had a black eye but everyone knew not to ask about it. For that, Peter was glad. The last thing he wanted was to have to pretend to be sympathetic.

Tod grinned at them, once they returned to an appropriate sitting distance. “Well, guys, it’s officially **summer** vacation.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Copper muttered, going bottom’s up on his beer.

Rolling his eyes, Tod turned between Felix on the diagonal and Copper beside him. He didn’t make eye contact with Peter. “ _Anyway._ Are you guys gonna stay in the dorms or go back to family?”

“Dorms,” Peter interjected. “We see my family enough.”

Tod nodded without adding to the conversation. Copper picked at some lint in the seat. Felix’s hand ran briefly on Peter’s middle finger.

Copper placed his drink down on the table and reached for a mozzarella stick. “I’m ready for a break, that’s for damn sure.”

“You’ve had a hard semester, too,” Tod said, sympathetic, leaning over to kiss Copper’s cheek. He found arm around him for his troubles.

Peter sucked on his own cheek. It wasn’t that he couldn’t join the conversation and act like everyone else. He just didn’t want to.

Felix interjected, “Should be easier, now that exams are over.”

_Boring._ It was so _boring,_ Peter took another drink. “Are we almost done here?” He asked, sliding his glass from one palm to the other across the table. “There’s an empty pool table. Won’t be for long.”

Copper tongued the inside of his cheek. “We just got here, Peter.”

“Cool it,” Felix grumbled in reply. A comfort to Peter, the words backing him up and rolling in his corner. He felt his teeth set on edge the second he acknowledged it.

Tod piped up, slicing through the tension in the air with a cheerful “Hey, would anyone wanna split pretzel bites?”

                “Oooh, pretzel bites,” A cheery voice cut through their moment of silence since Tod’s suggestion. Felix’s head spun over at the intrusion, even though he knew exactly who he’d see: he was already well acquainted with that voice. And, sure enough, Ruby stood there. Her short painted nails on one hip. Her other arm flung over her too-drunk-for-her-own-good girlfriend. She smiled. “Mind if we join?”

                Lacey pouted before any of the boys could accept or reject the request. “Those are _disgustin’._ They jus’ _microwave_ fake shit.”

                But Ruby only pressed her lips together and said, “We need a breather, anyway.”

                “Sure,” Copper said, looking around amongst the table as though for the objection. Felix had the feeling Peter had a few but for whatever reason elected to sit and watch the situation unfold. They decided on an order, and Tod left to go up to the bar while Lacey stumbled into the booth he’d left from, and Ruby took a seat beside Peter and Felix. The booths were big enough for six. The legroom was severely diminished, but it didn’t feel like Felix was stuck in a pita-press between Peter and Ruby. Even if Peter’s first instinct at the intrusion was to wrap his foot around Felix’s ankle, as though there was no legroom at all and they’d have to share.

                Still holding a menu, Copper let out a sudden laugh. “Do you think that if a dessert has a stupid name, people automatically think it’ll be stupidly good?”

                “Interesting hypothesis,” Felix muttered. Disconnecting and half distracted by the rubber of Peter’s shoes on his laces.

                Ruby tacked on with: “Example?”

                “Well this is a bar. So I’m looking at the ice creams right now.”

                Lacey leaned her head against her knuckles and muttered, “How is that stupid?”

                “Well there’s fro-yo. Fro-yo. That just sounds weird.”

                 “Captivating conversation starter, Copper,” Peter said, brow raising, “Truly _magnetic.”_

Copper didn’t say much, only flipped Peter the bird and looked over towards the bar to see if Tod needed help carrying anything.

                Peter’s foot retreated from Felix’s sneakers. Sensing the huffiness of the air in his friend’s lungs, Felix gave chase and tapped Peter’s shoe with his own. He didn’t pursue beyond that, for fear of what he’d be capable of if he transferred his annoyance. Sometimes it was hard to remember he still had magic.

                Ruby started prattling on about working at the diner. How lots of desserts sound odd, like _crumbles._ But the conversation wasn’t accelerating anywhere. A meaningless roundabout, shouting empty words like _crumble_ or _Dutch baby,_ in hopes to find the most peculiar one.

                The bar wasn’t busier than normal. Tod returned soon as he’d gone with a tray of pretzel bites in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. “Since we’re all a couple of drinks in.”

                Lacey grumbled about how she didn’t _want_ water, but the stumbling as she struggled to stand up and let Tod back into the booth spoke for itself. Ruby had enough tact to thank Tod on her behalf.

                Movement to the front of the bar, and Felix’s eyes followed. Flicking up from where he was watching a drunk woman stumble into the booth, insisting she wasn’t that far gone, over to the entrance behind her.

                And, just like that--- zap. Gone. Any joviality whisked away with the entrance of the traitors.

                Felix knew that he shouldn’t fixate on the Lost Boys. They were stuck in a cursed limbo. They had lost and would never see the faces of those ‘families’ they’d wanted so badly. The families they’d wanted without seeing the family they had in front of them.

                But Felix had never been good about giving up grudges. He hated them all and couldn’t look away as they walked in - smiling, laughing, and leaning up against the bar. Felix gnawed on the side of his teeth, the inane chatter in their booth unsubstantial white noise.

                For a group of kids cursed to be miserable, they sure looked content. And while he could blame the weed at the parties he’s seen them for the smiles on their faces, that wasn’t the obvious assumption this time.

                And they were laughing, enjoying themselves, rowdy and pushy, all the things they used to be. They _lost_ but they didn’t look any worse for wear.

                Felix gnawed his lip. If he were to throw a chair at them, who would be the first to react?

                Peter’s foot found his ankle again. Tod and Copper and Ruby said something. Lacey shot back the water. Felix looked down to the sticky booth table, and back to the former Lost Boys, more discreet.

                They were doing shots. Heads tipped back and coughing as though their throats were novice. Small discomforts could add up. Didn’t seem like enough, but cumulatively…

                Cumulatively, he still wanted to bash their noses in.

                A hand on his arm, and Felix almost got whiplash from the speed he returned to the booth he was sitting in. He assumed it’d be Peter. But Peter had his cell phone in hand under the table, tapping away at the brightly colored gems, on the other side, Ruby looked at him, lined eyes wide.

                “What?”

                “Run outside with me real quick.”

                Felix narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

                “Because I’ve got to hurl and there’s a line in the bathroom.”

                The lie was obvious, but nobody else seemed to care. Peter didn’t even react. Felix followed her away from the table, trying to suppress his glare as he passed the Lost Boys, downing pints and shovelling pizza into their fat ugly faces like fucking animals. They stepped out into the alleyway. It smelled like trash and liquor vomit. Further down in the alley, some lonely guy was getting a handjob in the shadows by some desperate hooker. Other than that, they were alone. And Ruby didn’t seem to mind.

                “Okay, dude. Spill.”

                Felix blinked. “Excuse me?”

                “Ever since that group of guys came in, you haven’t been able to look away. Something’s up. Are you okay?”

                “They couldn’t hurt me.”  Even on Neverland, dangerous soldiers though they were, he knew how to subdue their style. The idea that they could _hurt_ him was preposterous. It was just that they spoiled everything. They spoiled everything and for some reason Peter went the subtle route for their punishments. Felix would have split them up or, at the very least, made them permanent residents of a hospital or a gutter. But no, they couldn’t hurt them.

                Ruby purses her lips. Ignoring the groans from the man in the shadows. “Not what I asked.”

                “Is there a reason I shouldn’t be okay?”

                “You looked so _livid._ It was almost like...okay, it was exactly the same look you had back when you and Peter split...oh God.” Ruby lifted a hand to her mouth, posture turned rigid. “Did Peter sleep with one of them?”

                Felix was, admittedly, not expecting that. He blinked. “No.”

                “Did _you_ sleep with one of them?”

                “What?” Felix narrowed his eyes at the thought. Back when they were Lost Boys, they’d been brothers. There was an innate clause of immaturity and childishness in the fraternity. And while all of the Lost Boys didn’t heed it all the time, Felix took pride in how he’d obeyed the creed. He’d never even considered among the Lost Boys.

                Or, at least not in a couple hundred years. Not with any of the traitors still standing, either. And, even then, that’d been a game, a little bit of fun on a boring patrol. An exchange between him and R-- friends. People in the Land Without Magic took sex so seriously. Annoying.

                Ruby was babbling on, mid sentence by the time Felix returned to the present. “---because, you know, you and Peter were broken up for a long time, so if something happened between when you broke up and got back together, if he’s trying to _guilt_ you or something for anything you did when you weren’t dating, that makes him the asshole.”

                Felix blinked. It’s preposterous. But he does have to wonder about her resolve. The adamance in her eyes, the complete ignoring of the shadow-man whining and hissing in the periphery, the hard line of her jaw all flexed. Her body language spelled out Battle. Why did she care so much? So, he said, “Why are you so sure?”

                “You wouldn’t cheat on Peter. You’re obsessed with him. You won’t even watch porn without him because you think it’s unfaithful.”

                “That doesn’t necessarily mean…”

                “If it was before the breakup, Peter would’ve broadcasted it to the entire fucking city, and you guys have been glued to the hip since you got back together.” Ruby narrowed her eyes, “Are you telling me you _did?”_

“No.” Felix shook his head. The man in the shadows finished with what sounded like a dry-heave and a mouth full of spit. “I wouldn’t.”

                “See? Damn, Fee. Why are you giving me the third degree here? I’m in your corner.”

                It did bring up a question, though, of exclusivity. He and Peter hadn’t discussed it. He supposed that, if living by the standards of Storybrooke City, they would have some kind of exclusivity. But, between themselves, they dropped the facade, and were what they were. Friends. They were the best of friends, on a different operating system than everyone else seemed to believe. Just like Peter had said, on the hill. Love didn’t have to be family, bloodlines and lineage and stature. It didn’t have to be romance, with its sugary sweet bullshit aroma. Not knights and maidens. Not rainbow waves of Magic confirming and deciding for people where their loyalties lie.  It was so much More when people put in the work.

                It was knowing that a friend would be there, in any scenario and situation. Trust and confidence and indescribable elation at a friend’s mere presence. Friends who knew each other’s minds and bodies and knew how to wring both of them out, panting and euphoric. Felix always believed in Peter, and Peter always chose Felix.

                “Oy. Earth to Felix.” Ruby waved her hands in front of his face. “Seriously. Something’s wrong. You know you can tell me. Whatever it is.”

She punctuated her statement with the most sickeningly sympathetic smile Felix had ever seen. It looked damn near genuine, despite her lack of agenda. Who would have thought a woman could conjure up something like sympathy?

Felix couldn’t think of anything immediate to say, seeing that she felt he owed her something to say. The man in the shadow ran out of the alleyway, fast enough so that they couldn’t tell who he was. They heard the pin-drop of stilettos on concrete before they announced themselves with, “Hey, you guys smoke right? Wanna buy some matches?”

Ruby pressed her lips together, turning towards the girl. “You still selling matches, Jenny?”

Jenny gave a half-hearted grin, or at least it looked like she did, it was hard to tell under the layers of smeared makeup. “Hey, old habits die hard. Frankly, I prefer selling matches. Nobody bought them, though. Thank God I turned eighteen.”

“Hooking’s still illegal,” Felix said, not following her train of thought.

“Yeah, which is dumb, but now it’s not disgusting.” Jenny said, straight-laced, “And I can actually afford to feed myself so.”

Ruby frowned. “If you need a job at Granny’s, I can get you one.”

“I know.” Jenny said, mood turning south at the corners of her eyes, pulling a matchbook from her bra, “But doing dishes in the back isn’t gonna be enough. Do you guys want matches or no?”

“We’re all good on matches,” Ruby said. “But do you want a five or something?”

“Nah. I got $20 for the handie. Frankly, my tips are better than yours.” Jenny snorted. Felix could see her eyes darken. Something pissed her off. He recognized that expression from himself. “You know it’s funny, when I was a kid, selling matches on the street, getting pneumonia on Christmas Eve, nobody gave a shit. I turn eighteen, start selling a few handjobs and punch in my v-card. Suddenly everybody and their _grandmother_ wants to ‘help.’ But I’m not pathetic. I’ve got a room, a certificate in massage, and when I’m on the street I’m clocking in $200 a night. More than double that when I’m in the parlor. I don’t need your pity anymore. I needed it when I was eight.”

                Ruby flinched. “Oh come on Jenny, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

                “Nobody ever does.” Jenny replied, hands on her hips and, in a surprising turn of events, switched her attention to Felix. He’d thought he’d faded into the shadows, forgotten. “And _you._ You’ve got baggage. Stop being a brat and deal with your boyfriend. You know how hard it is to get a guy to come when he has to listen to relationship drama?”

                Felix stared. “We’re fine.”

                “So fine your friend has to drag you in an alleyway to talk about it?”

                He had to admit, he didn’t mind her candor. It reminded him of Rufio. But the comparison wasn’t fair, what had she done to earn it? She was a salesperson, always with an agenda. Even if Felix couldn’t figure, for the life of him, what it was at this point.

                Jenny rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ve got a house call in ten. You guys have fun bickering,” She put her matchbook back into her bra and began to clip away, heels hitting the pavement at an easy confident pace. “What else are Friday nights for, right?”

                She strutted out the alleyway, leaving Felix and Ruby in the silence of the night. They could hear the thrumming from rowdy cheers inside, the hum of the jukebox, slightly, as though there were cotton in their ears.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

                The meal of the night was turkey and coleslaw. The scandals of the last dinner with Flora and Fauna faded into the background.  Even if Peter had to grit his teeth when they answered the door, they assaulted him with happy grins and quick embraces. Even if Felix felt distinctly _wrong_ when they turned and did the same to him. It was a fucking cliche, and if not for the promise of free food, he might have been more uncomfortable. But it was habit to pull an extra dining chair from the entrance closet. And so, he did.

Peter turned to the former-fairies and wrinkled his nose, “ _Seven_ places?”

Speaking up before either Flora or Fauna could get a word in edgewise, Rumple looked up from the silverware he was setting down. Frowning, he said, “Neal is bringing that girl who tried to assault him.”

Fauna frowned. “Oh, don’t be so grim. Obviously it’s been going well or he wouldn’t bring her.”

The look on Rumple’s face clearly read _I’ll damn well be grim if I want to be._ However, he said nothing. He set out the silverware, lest he outwardly snap at his mother.

 

Neal and Rae arrived, late, with nervous smiles on their faces. Rae was a tall girl, long faced and carrying an elegant sort of beauty in her face with dark shy eyes. Just by the look on her face, Peter knew she’d be the sort of girl with pockets easy to pick.

“Sorry we’re late,” Neal said, giving hugs to his grandmother's, “Rae was kept late at work.”

“Oh, I wasn’t even working,” She said, holding onto a large tupperware over her belly. “I was getting my hair relaxed.”

“But you were at work.” Neal added on, looking so disgustingly smitten Felix had half an urge to turn away. Baelfire wasn’t supposed to look like that.

“As a customer,” Rae replied, shaking her head.

With a small shrug, Neal turns back to the company, gesturing to each person as he introduced them. “Rae, this is my grandma Fauna, that’s my grandma Flora. That’s my cousin Peter and his boyfriend Felix--”

Felix tried not to flinch. He’d never get used to that word.

Neal went on, “And my father, Elias.”

“Great to meet you,” Rae said, trying to sound friendly and happy, as though it were actually great to meet them. It came out sounding more _afraid_ than anything else. She abruptly held up the tupperware, happy to have a means of redirecting the subject. “I brought hazelnut soup. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes by bringing pie or anything.”

“How kind of you!” Flora said, cheerfully. She touched Rae’s arm, lightly and kindly. In a moment she turned back towards Neal and said, “Neal, dear, will you pop that in to get it heated up and put it in a serving bowl?”

“Sure,” He said, thankful for the awkward reprieve, and Rae opted to follow him in.

Once they were out of earshot, Fauna moved to take a seat at the table. “Poor thing, she looks so overwhelmed.”

Flora nodded. “Well, it’s bound to be a lot. Say, Felix dear, do you remember how nervous you were the first time you came ‘round?”

Freezing, Felix shuffled his feet. “Not really.”

Peter picked up where he left off. “We weren’t even together.”

“Oh, but that’s even more overwhelming.”

Rumple took his seat, visibly uninterested in the conversation, but nevertheless putting in, “How so, Mum?”

“Because you’re in no man’s land.  If you don’t know what you are to that person, how are you supposed to know how to act around their loved ones?”

Drly, Felix said, “I don’t think I gave it so much through.”

Fauna looked over, not unkindly, and passing around the water pitcher, reminded him, “You did all the dishes, dear.”

Before the interrogation could get worse, Neal burst from the kitchen, He was holding a matching serving bowl. Rae walked in behind him, holding the soup cups and placemats so the heat wouldn’t distort the table. 

 

* * *

 

 

                “So, Rae, Neal tells us you’re a stylist. What’s that like?”

                “It’s...good. Um, pretty social which I’m not terribly used to. I was a homeschool kid and my cosmetology training was pretty small too, but I like it.”

                “Do you have a specialty? Or something you enjoy?”

                She waited, thinking for a moment, and then said, “Well, most often I’m the one doing extensions and weaves and whatnot.” She gave a nervous smile, and looked into her soup. “But I think my favorite’s probably health and repair.”

                “She does seem to enjoy that,” Neal said once Rae looked as though she didn’t want to elaborate further. “She’s convinced I’m going to get dandruff in a few years.”

                “I got you the nice preventative shampoo, that’s all I’m saying,” She grinned, warming up to the company bit by bit.

 

 

 

                “So, boys, how are classes going?”

                “Fine.”

                “Nothing to report.”

 

 

 

                “Elias, I think rent should be due about---”

                “I won’t be charging you.”

                “We’ll slip the cheque in your pocket when you’re not looking.”

                “I’ll tear it up.”

                “Elias--”

                “Don’t bother.”

 

 

 

                “Have you heard of that new film that’s coming to the cinema? I hear it’s a hopeful for the Oscars this year.”

 

 

               

                “What about this weather we’re having?”

 

 

 

                “Do you suppose having a bird feeder might attract bears?”

 

 

                And so it went.  Everyone cloaked the conversation in inane prattle.  Who was doing what, things that didn’t matter. Peter kept mostly quiet.  Lulling in his own hope and sense for revenge for daring to tell him to be silent.

                Flora talked, excitedly, about how well the daisies were blooming and how her vegetables were coming in. Fauna went on and on about her birdbath needing to be cleaned and a new recipe for the hummingbird feeder she’d come up with and how well it was working.

                On and on, adding up to nothing whatsoever. Until Peter found himself in the familiar scenari: smoking out in the back while everyone else did the dishes. Sucking in toxins while everyone dealt out a round of bridge. Finally away from the inaction. At least he knew he wasn’t missing much, at least until he heard the scrape of a cane against the back porch. He spun around, cigarette still hanging between his teeth.  Rumplestiltskin, Elias Gold, whatever he was being called, stood there, still.

The world breathed around them, still, till Rumple spoke.

“What, specifically, are you smoking tonight?”

“Reds.”

The older man took a moment, seemed to consider, and used his cane to shuffle down the steps into the garden. “I’ll have one.”

Reaching into his pocket for the pack and his lighter. Peter offered both to his son-slash-cursed uncle.  Raising a brow, he said, “After so long trying to quit?”

“Have you ever even tried?” Rumple replied, curt, hanging back the pack and sucking in, the embers appearing on the end of his cigarette like magic.

Peter chortled and tapped the ash off his own, “No.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.”

“Suppose I wouldn’t,” Peter said, suckng another stream of air in from the stick. “Or maybe I’m just more well acquainted with myself.”

“Is that what you’re calling it?”

   Peter had to take a moment to draw the connection, make sure he actually understood what had so easily fluttered out of his son’s mouth. When he did, he laughed. “Nothing so fantastic.”

He hated his own congeniality. The way Peter saw it, Rumple was solely responsible for everything wrong in his life. Granted, he had to exist. Malcolm had to become Peter Pan. The dominoes would fall, and fate would take its course. But why couldn’t Peter just write Rumple off in hatred?  Rumble had ruined his plans, had made him kill his dearest friend. By all means, it should have been _done._ But something inside him wanted to tug on that string connecting them and see what note it played.

Curiosity, that was all. Peter could live without his son just fine, and had for a century. He was free of the kid, and as long as the kid was out of sight he was out of mind and that was just fine. Till he started meddling, till he got magic and started to ruin everything.

                And did ruin everything.

                But he was still his _son._

Or, Peter thought, breathing in turrets of smoke, his cursed uncle. Malcolm might have liked being an uncle, might even have been good at it. He could've shown Rumple how to gamble or drink. Or what herbs to gnaw on to give him a buzz in his skull. And then handed him back to people who were supposed to take care of and enrich the child. He could have done the interesting parts.

                But instead he sired Rumple and everything spiraled out from there. And even in his attempted Utopia, Rumple just wouldn’t leave him. Connectivity, without will, sat contemptuously in his gut. 


	8. Chapter 8

June came.  The smog mixed with the heat. Gritty dirty lines of mirage sizzled through the air.

Felix would have thought there’d be little to no change in life in the residence hall. It was open year ‘round and nobody could pinpoint how or why this was peculiar elsewhere.  SBU didn’t offer summer classes, but everything else was open.

                Some people, however, did leave.  Tiger Lily and her brother had packed up to go live with their father for the summer. Felix had even overheard her saying to Wendy they might commute next fall. Wendy had packed up for the summer as well. (“I’ll  be sleeping on my brothers’ couch all summer, I’m afraid. They don’t have a flat big enough for three room. I _am_ looking forward to seeing them.”) 

                Nevertheless, the residence hall was still bursting with life. Only without the sheer volume of people. Somehow the colors weren’t as vibrant. Felix had spent the day of the first exodus bent over the pool table in the front lobby, growing more used to the way things desaturated by the minute. The second day the halls were haunted with noiselessness. Peter was nowhere to be found. So Felix ended up grabbing a textbook for a class he’d take in the fall. The words, the certainty, comforted him. It was stable and direct in a way people just weren’t.        

 

 

July surrounded them before they knew it, hot and bright long days made for lazy hours by a fan in the dorm or out by the pier.

Copper went camping in the woods for a weeklong hunting trip. Tod spent a lot more time texting Felix during that week than usual. The heat was getting to Ruby and Lacey, causing the women to bicker more than normal, a fact Felix noticed but didn’t ask. Lacey was probably wrong anyway. Midmonth passed and the construction finally started in packing up from spring. People spent hours admiring the new giant skyscrapers, office buildings, stores.

During the day, Peter started playing his instruments outside. He’d lie lazily against trees while Felix would read beside him. At night, activities spanned between breaking into fenced-in areas just-because. Or  tagging the areas around before any of the new teen-gangs that have seemed to spring out of the woodwork could get around to it. Or getting into fights, or dancing in the club, drinking in The Rabbit Hole. Or to sticky hot claustrophobic house parties and seeing what kind of good time they could garner from it.

One particularly hot day, when it was too sticky for distractions of either chaos or eroticism, Peter and Felix spent a good few hours just sitting in Granny’s air conditioning. They spend their time absorbing the coolness floating in from the vents.  Ruby had given them each two sweating glasses of water, dripping down the side. Upon the fifth water refill, had said, more to Felix than to Peter, “Guys ,just because you’re my friends doesn’t mean you get to loiter forever.  You do need to order something. Granny’s starting to notice.”

They bought a banana split to share. By the time they were done, Storybrooke City’s population had gone up by another kingdom’s worth of people.

“I got bored with this as is,” Peter said, by way of explanation. He spooned the last remainders of strawberry ice cream into his mouth. Everyone in the City froze, suspended in time by that glimmer of magic, unmoving, and an array of people appeared in the street. Peter waved his hand and ballgowns and tunics turned into daywear. Some disappeared and assimilated, others shifted to crosswalks. One even appeared seated in the diner. And then, time started again. Peter nodded. “There. That’ll make it interesting.” .

“Just like that?” Felix stared at him, bewildered.  On an off-thought while you’re eating ice cream? No fanfare or extraneous showmanship. Watching the flash of a grin tease on the corners of Peter’s mouth. “Amazing.”

Puffing up in the chest, absorbing the inflation to his ego, Peter snickered. “It’s not a difficult curse, once you get the hang of it.”

 

               

                The summer passed. Every day some mix between trying to stay cool, finding something to preoccupy their attentions, and raising some sort of hell.  Whether by trespassing or tagging or the same things they’d done since June, life was kinetic. Days were long and the nights meant the clock was ticking to keep cover. But Peter found he liked it that way; crude as the reminder was, time added tension. Even the illusion of it sufficed.

 

 

* * *

 

                Standing in the elevator up to their dorm, Felix watched Peter lean up against the wall of buttons, five floors to the residence hall. They’d gotten fast food for dinner, a long day of running through alleyways and with pocket knives unsheathed just in case anybody asked them for trouble.  Nobody _did,_ but they were prepared in case. Other people seemed to think that late summer days weren’t the best ones for extraneous amounts of trouble. The “new” semester was just around the corner, nobody would remember anything you asked about the last one, and nobody wanted to squander away the last few red summer sunsets for getting into a fight or breaking into Darkstar or McDonald’s.

                It wasn’t a deterrent from wandering along the concrete and skyscrapers and alleyways and boardwalks and teasing along the fringe of the woods only to head back into the thick of the pavement again. They’d wander, most days, aimlessly and in giant loopy circles. Felix never minded, it wasn’t constant and he could still go to the greenhouses or sit in Granny’s. Honestly, the walking was better than sitting cooped up in their room for days on end.

                Felix had managed to keep his knees stable when it moved, but his stomach still did backflips from the unnatural motion. It’d been years, but he figured with a little more determination, and a few more trips in the elevator, he’d get accustomed to it. There were sea legs and there was elevator legs. One harder to achieve than the other.

                The elevator lurched to an abrupt halt. Not a lot of people stayed on campus in the summer, and even fewer hung around during the evening hours, with the movie theater or bowling alley or anything that would amount to more fun. And, come September, the residence hall would seem new again. The pattern had kept up in the last few years, Felix knew what to expect.

                Or, he had up until they’d took a few steps down their hall and overheard the voices reverberating through the halls. He couldn’t make out the specifics of the sounds, it was some other language...Spanish, he realized after a moment.

                There were two voices, an older woman’s and a teenage boy. And, judging by the distinct, unique curl to Peter’s lip when he heard them, Felix knew who it was.

                They found the voices, inside a room laid out with cardboard boxes shoved against walls, hanging up paintings and bickering out the details of the room, or maybe of fall classes, in loud Spanish. Peter smiled as he wrapped his knuckles on the doorframe.

                Maybe Felix should sit in on a few foreign language classes once classes started up again.

                Peter grinned, bright as the two heads of dark hair spun around to make eye contact. “Hi,” Peter grinned. “Moving in?”

                “Um, yeah. I’m Henry,” The kid came closer to greet them, polite and docile and damn near trained, with an extended hand. “And I think you probably recognize my mom…”

                “Mayor Mills,” Peter said, puffing up and sweet and exhibiting every last suggestion of nonverbal lies. “Delighted. I’m Peter Banning, this’s Felix Antony. We live across the hall.”

                Regina stood behind Henry, one hand on her hip, but otherwise none the wiser. How funny, Felix thought, after the bitch had ruined everything, she could stand there, in the midst of a curse that used to be hers, stuffy but otherwise unopposed to Henry making a quick friend to start off his college days.  All Henry really could say, hands in his pockets was a friendly, “It’s nice to meet you guys.”

Peter didn’t go away without making an impression, however, and so he asked, “So, Henry, excited to start up at old SBU?”

                Felix sighed, he’d almost forgotten Peter’s last change. Making small, homey Storybrooke into great bustling Storybrooke City a few years ago had snowballed into further improvements. One of which was an overnight spell; Storybrooke Community College had become Storybrooke University. Peter hadn’t bragged about it, but Felix had the feeling he’d stuck his hand into another realm, like a kid in a cookie jar, and grabbed a few more residence, just to fatten out his game.

                Henry nodded. He didn’t look much like the kid he’d been on Neverland. He’d grown. Felix knew it was bound to happen, but the shock of it all struck him. Henry, Peter’s truest believer, had grown into someone tall and thin-faced and the right size and dimension for a Lost Boy. Not that the Lost Boys mattered anymore, but still. Nevertheless. So.

                “Well,” Peter said, a friendly glisten in his eyes, “We’re in 311 if you fancy stepping in for a bit. For later of course, Madam Mayor.”

                “Thanks, man,” Henry said, folding a few shirts on instinct when Regina handed them to him. “I appreciate it.”

                “Nothing to it. You know, uni can seem like it lasts forever without a proper group of friends,”  Peter brushed lint off his shirt before turning around to return through the door. “We’ll see you around, Henry.” He nodded once, curt and quick, “Madam Mayor” before turning back through Henry’s door and wandering back into 311.

               

* * *

 

 

                This was it. The amount of collective time Peter had put in _waiting_ for Henry had come to an all-time high. Granted, at least he’d only been waiting in Storybrooke for a short moment of...oh, was it seven years? And he’d had things to keep him busy: construction and business, street fights and races, cigarettes, the ever slowly unwinding tale of the Gold family, and Felix. But it all hinged on Henry; the ultimate sign he’d won, the living breathing trophy and puzzle piece that would illuminate the rest of the pieces. Make them worth it.

 He’d been digging around himself, trying to make all the details stick. He’d brought in realms, created a bustling metropolis out of the sticks and straw Regina and Rumple had left behind, mended his relationship with Felix -- and then some. The city was getting bigger, the way lives intertwined was more and more complex, and it’d all come together, everything would fit into place with Henry under his wing.

Peter had won before, but he knew he’d never really feel it till everything stuck together and stayed put. They were getting there, and Henry would be the glue to make it.

Besides, Felix was still lonely without the Lost Boys and made up for the friendship with Tod and Copper and girls like Ruby and Lacey and he’d be much happier with proper boys as friends again. 

Which, they would be. It was just around the corner. Just like his great city was around the corner years ago. But unlike the city, this wouldn’t come up empty and cold. It couldn’t. He just had to wait a little while longer. For Regina to leave.

“Peter?”

He turned at Felix’s voice; the kid leaned up against the door with a confused look on his face.

“What?”

Felix pressed his lips together. “You’re pacing.”

“I’m excited.” Peter reasoned, cocking his head to the side. “It’s coming together. The curse -- it’ll be everything we wanted.”

“You said that last time you reached into a new realm. And when you added the gangs. And when you converted us to a university.” Felix said, slowly as always, setting to a slow pace around the perimeter.

“Just _what_ is it you’re implying?” Peter snapped, narrowing his eyes and pulling on a look that’d make anyone shiver in their shoes.

Felix shrugged. “You...get excited a lot.”

“Makes your job a lot easier.”

Rolling his eyes, outward and audacious, Felix spoke slowly, “That isn’t what I meant. I hope you won’t be disappointed if it’s no different than the other edits.”

“It will be,” Peter said, direct and meaningful as his steps when he came close to stand between Felix’s knees. A hand on his neck, unthreatening with blunt nails, but still pulling on some kind of string Felix couldn’t identify. “Trust me.”

“Only because he showed up?”

A snicker, Peter’s eyes sparked with mischief. “Are you jealous, again?”

“You’re implying I was jealous the first time,” Felix rolled his eyes, leaning back on his hands so Peter could better position himself to crane over him.

“I think you wished you were.”

“Is the slaughterhouse that nice?”

“No.” Peter ticked his head from side to side. “But it’s a question of _attention_ not _intention.”_

“This time around, Henry was convenient. I’m the one you worked for. You’re always clear about what you want.”

“Ah. What I want. Would it have helped, before?” Peter widened his eyes. Felix couldn’t tell if he was playing at a cipher or trying to get in his head. But he was warm, threading his palm along Felix’s arms till their wrists met, and then the fingertips.

Without an answer ready on his lips, Felix laid in silence, considering the question. Peter’s mouth met the tendon in his neck, nipping and sharp, and with a shuddering arc in his shoulders, the words came to him. “Not sure what it would’ve helped.”

“If you wanted to be more jealous, you’d’ve needed more to lose.”

Felix paused. The next question anchoring in his mind without permission. He asked it anyway. “Did you want me to be?”

Peter let off one of those breathy laughs, quiet and rushed with all the air billowing out of his chest and filling the room with the contradicting scents of his toothpaste and cigarettes. Gorgeous and angled over him, the kind of laugh that sinks into every corner and crevice and demands obsession. Felix didn’t hear what he said in reply, but did feel Peter shifting on his hips.

“Hm?” He didn’t want to break the moment, but Peter was blinking at him expectantly.

“Stop projecting  and show me how not-jealous you are.”

A snicker rising in his throat, and Felix tilted his head along the pillows, “And how do you intend for me to do that?”

Another one of those laughs, and even though he was craning close he spoke, and it felt so much like deja vu it was, almost, surreal.

_“Felix! Get over here.”_

 

* * *

 

 

            They found Henry again, the next day, with his phone pressed against his ear in the dining hall, barely touching his straight-from-the-microwave pizza. His voice carried, if only for the different tones he used for effect. _“_ Mom! No _. No me estás escuchando.”_

Peter’s eyes darted towards the sound of Henry’s voice. It was much deeper than it’d been on Neverland - after all, Henry had aged to eighteen by that point in the curse - but something about it still spit belief, much to Peter’s relief.  Felix seemed to where Peter’s attention had gone, but said nothing, rolling on his heels as they waited in line for the stir-fry.  The waiting was always the worst part. Hunger pains came with waiting.

                Henry ran a hand through his fringe, and spoke back into the phone, “ _Ellos me caen bien…”_ He paused, frown etched on his face. Like when he’d been so adamant on the island, that his family was coming to rescue them, that he wouldn’t play along. He sighed. “ _Si...si...no….si.”_

Peter’s plate came first, the smell of broccoli in sauce and roasted chicken, sesame oil, made him salivate. He leaned up against the counter to wait for Felix’s order to come up, not taking his eyes off Henry’s angry Spanish phone call.

It was funny, a little, other than lifting the pause on time for a few years, Peter hadn’t done much to adapt Henry’s life. What on earth had gotten into them?  What had the curse done, on its own accord, to meddle with the woman who’d broken through the bonds of his Thinking Tree, ripped Henry’s heart out of Peter’s chest, and never broke a sweat? What had it done to the relationship between her and her son? A mystery with minor intrigue. Peter decided to take it on -- and why not? It shouldn’t take long.

Felix got his plate from the line up, and turned to Peter. “I assume we’ll be sitting with Henry?”

“Assumed right.” Peter grinned, and led the way to the otherwise empty table.

“I don’t know that word in Spanish...oh, okay.” Henry didn’t seem to notice them, even when they sat down, right across from him. He was too busy looking down at his plate, and scratching the back of his neck. He paused, listened to whatever was being said on the other line. He stopped, listened, and sighed, “ _¿Por qué no?”_

                Across the table, Peter and Felix exchanged glances, not quite curious enough to try to figure out what they were talking about, but slighted that they didn’t. It felt like cheating, Peter decided, to use magic in this instance. He had to win Henry, as a trophy a prize, fair and square. Otherwise, how would he have won?

Mid-sentence, Henry stopped, sighed, and began to nod. _Si…no..si….”_ He waited, counting out seconds on his fingers and got to thirty before speaking again. “ _Te quiero, Mama. Chao chao.”_

No sooner had he pressed the red END CALL circle on his phone, muttered a small “ _Ay dios mio”_ than Peter jumped right into conversation.

                “Hi. Name’s Henry, right?” 

                Jumping, not expecting company, Henry nodded, “Yeah, tthat’s me. Um…” He looked between the two. “Which one’s Felix and which one’s… _Peter,_ right?”

A bright smile, not unlike the ones Peter would use to charm Lost Boys, and Peter nodded. “Yeah, I’m Peter.  So how are you liking res hall living?”

Henry shrugged. “My roommate just moved in. He seems cool.”

“Sounds nice,” Peter nodded, narrowing his eyes as Henry started to lift his pizza to his mouth, conversation taking a downward spiral.

But Peter Pan was nothing if not persistent. Peter Banning was always awkward and oddly Malcolm-like, but Peter knew that his true personality would shine through. He just had to tap into it.

And, thankfully, he thought while stabbing out conversation starters, waiting for a bite, conversations didn’t have a three-strike-you’re-out rule.

 

In the end, it was Felix who garnered a friendship with Henry, over a game of beer pong at Copper’s second party of the summer, Henry lightweight drunken flush by the end of the first game, slurring Spanglish victory cries once he got the swing of things, ruffling Felix’s hair till they both collapsed onto a hide-a-bed beside Peter.

Noting Henry’s dopey smile, and the sober concentration on Felix’s face, Peter snickered. “First time drinking, Henry?”

“Naw. Have ya met my mom?” And Henry, unembarrassed and free from the few beers he had, nodded, “‘s fun though. I was never good at throwing before.”

Felix brought his own solo cup to his lips, “You did fine.”

Henry beamed, bright, and swooped over to the side, as though he couldn’t quite hold himself steady. “I had a good teacher,” He grinned.

                Catching the intonation, Peter quirked his head. “Henry. Are you _flirting_ with Felix?” He widened his eyes in an exaggerated display, “In front of me and everything?”

                “No!” Henry went red.

                It was an interesting development, albeit one that Peter couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Didn’t like the way it made him feel…. _defensive._ Like it bothered him or something. But he couldn’t pinpoint what it was, or let on, to either of them.

                Felix rolled his eyes, draining out the last of his beer. “He’s fishing for a reaction.”

                “Right.”

                Peter winked, pulling a box of Marlboros from his pocket and lighting up.

 

                Drinks, cigarettes, beer pong, and the same thruming and throbbing of the crowd that was there last time, the time before that, and every single party, exactly the same. Drunken karaoke, mixing shitty cocktails, stoned former Lost Ones scooping chocolate ice cream into a blender. The same every time, beer, vodka, margaritas shot down throats, fuzzy rooms spinning around.  Felix taught Henry how to drink, Peter smoked and took shots without the patience to slow down with them. Heavy limbs, moving underwater, swallowing a good time.

 

* * *

 

 

Getting drunk, while a great idea in theory, meant the whole room quivered in front of Felix’s eyes the second he woke up. His stomach retched in protest, head throbbing like he’d been the unfortunate face of a drum all night. Eyes crusty and slamming shut the second he woke up.

                And Peter simply laughed at his reaction.

                “Well, look who’s a little hungover,” He said, the grin clear in his tone of voice.

                Felix groaned. “This is what it feels like to die from dreamshade.”

                Peter laughed. The magic sound curdled in Felix’s ears. A vague memory of Felix Antony gorging himself on chocolate cake at a birthday party and rejecting anything else sweet for three days. He hoped the metaphor wasn’t entirely transitive.

                “You know, Felix,” He could feel Peter’s weight sink down on the bunk next to him. “I know a spell that can get rid of that. What will you give me if I do?”

                “What do you want?”

                Peter thought for a beat, and Felix managed to slit open one eye and ignore the throbbing pain that came alongside it. The light streaking over his corneas. Peter looked down at him. “Arson.”

                “Again? That all?”

                “Don’t tempt me. I’m certain I can get more creative.”

                Felix shut his eyes again, the light too much to bare. “Okay. Arson it is.”

                And, just like that, with Peter’s hand against the skin on the small of his back, the pain evaporated. Light, bright, and easy, as though it had never been there to begin with. Peter’s hand skimmed, upwards along his spine, soft at first. His nails dug in between Felix’s shoulder blades. And, as though on a marionette’s strings, Felix turned around at the touch.

                “In the meantime, what were you thinking?”

                A devil’s grin, Peter’s hand capped around Felix’s shoulder, slid down to his throat, his chest, and pushed, holding him down. “Tell me how you’ll do it.”    

                The command was unquestionable, but given a playful air at the feeling of Peter’s lips on Felix’s neck. He held it there, the heat and tease of breath, waiting for information.

                “I’ll get kerosine.” Felix began, waiting for Peter to move. Instead, he looked up.

                “Do have a little creativity, Felix. Come on, you’re disappointing me.”

                A small growl and Felix started over, dryly,  “I’ll steal some kerosine, and get some matches from a hooker.”

                And, if nothing else, the unexpectedness of the last part prompted Peter to continue. HIs lips crashed against Felix’s pulse point, tongue flicking out against the line of his jaw, down to his chest. Hands running down his arms, his ribs. Nothing more, Peter’s eyes flickered open, staring at Felix again, expectantly. He steepled his fingers against his abdomen, impatient.

                Felix’s throat went dry. “I’ll burn something downtown this time. The post office .”

                “Ambitious,” Peter grinned, returning his mouth against warm skin, sliding down, stopping shortly before he could achieve any sort of effect on Felix. His cheek rested against Felix’s thigh, hand playing with the material on his pajamas. “What else?”

                Stomach on fire and brain not operating at full capacity, Felix squirmed. Heat running between his thighs, lurching in anticipation for what Peter was hovering over, waiting, impatiently humming. _Think fast._ “It’s a big place. ”

`               “You’re not being very creative.”

                “Arson isn’t a very creative crime.”

                “Anything can be creative if you come at it at the right angle.” Fingers hook around the elastic waistband, teasing edge in his voice, sparking vibrant bright. Tongue visibly clicking against the back of his teeth. At the sound of Felix’s whine, Peter quirked a brow. “Shall I enlighten you?”

                Felix hoped his nod would suffice, unsure how to conjure words or thoughts or sentences in any sort of streamline that could make sense.

                Peter laughed, voice gone dark. “Dare me.”

                Breathing, slow, Felix could feel his temperature skyrocket; he could swear he felt every last stitch in the fabric of his boxers, the expanse of Peter’s forearms by his knees and cheek by his high. Words came, easily then, at the request. “I dare you.”

                A slow chuckle in his throat, and Peter gave an inelegant tug, abrupt and jerking the pajamas and boxers down at the same time. _Inelegant_ and staccato movements, some slow-motion ballet.  “Whatever have you gotten yourself into?” He chuckled and, without a word more, gulped him down.

                Felix could feel the tingle of magic prickle on the edges of his shaft at the corner of Peter’s lips. The pull from inside him, warmth flushing through his body, electric energy building up in his abdomen, muscles clenching involuntarily. Hands in Peter’s hair, not daring to _do_ anything with them, but touch. Petting seemed so self-aggrandizing, so he simply felt. Felt Peter flex his throat around him, hands reaching under and cupping, pressing against and into skin, the curve of smooth lips sink and thrust. Felix’s hips darted involuntarily, and the swell of pride he felt at the sputter Peter somehow let slip, was belied instantly, by heat rocketing up his spine.

                And then, Peter pulled off, long string of saliva beading out the corner of his lip. “Stand up,” He said, snickering low and dark; Felix could hardly hear it, make sense of the words, beyond the pounding in his ears.

                Felix couldn’t suppress his whine, even if he wanted to, “ _Peter…”_

“Don’t make me ask twice.”

                Obediently, Felix rolled off the bed. Legs wobbling like a fucking baby calf, bones rendered to jelly, it was a miracle he could stand.

                But, honestly, if Peter had told him to, he could’ve set the sky ablaze.

                Peter stood and, without a word or an indication, the room snapped to black at the face of a tie, silk and soft against the back of his eyes, lumpy knot secured behind his head. Felix’s heart lurched, fight or flight savance, channeled through the senses he’d lost.

                “Still with me, Felix?”

                With the intention to speak, Felix opened his mouth and met leather. A belt, perhaps, fitted between his teeth, Peter’s nimble fingers tied around the back of his head.

                Peter’s voice was soft, cooing, edges rounded out, “I’ve half a mind to plug your ears, but I want you to hear yourself.”

                Felix could feel the blood pump, pulse through his veins. His knees locked, something to keep him on his feet, when Peter’s lips found his neck. Teeth hard against his skin, warmth, suction; Felix could imagine the bruise he’d sport in the morning, pulsing again and again, coming in waves against his cock. Lips, mouth, teeth, nothing else. He couldn’t even feel Peter’s body heat beside him, but it had to be there. Magic didn’t have teeth or a tongue.

                His fever relieved, half a beat later, heart stuttering with the introduction of cold. A concentrated spurt of ice, melting against his hot skin, and Peter was there and present, all of a sudden, dragging ice along his clavicle, down his chest, trails of water in their wake. Sweat, the hard fever of arousal, contradicted by Peter’s annoying evasiveness, the cold sting of ice.  _Just touch me. Make me feel your hands._ The whimper beat through his gag and he could hear Peter’s exhale, fuzzy and off kilter, and then, without warning, heat. A small bead on his collar where the ice had been, a pinch of pain, the smell of smoke, and Felix can see the picture in his mind’s eye. Himself, standing still, blindfolded and gagged, while Peter pressed a cigarette lighter to his clavicle. Fire singing against skin, immediately soothed by the presence of ice against the wound.

His collar, the center of his chest against the bony protruding plate, stomach, spine, patterns, history of the flash of a moment repeated on loop. Ice, fire, ice; chill, burn, soothe. Pinch, singe, tease the memory of what coolness felt like. The burns smarted the moment the ice left them. Felix’s skin tightened, shook, scarred and unused to this brand of euphoric pain.

Peter’s breath caught by Felix’s cheek. “The theme of the night is creativity. You were a Lost Boy once, what sort of vivid fantasy might you have conjured up?”

The ice went away. The fire went away, leaving Felix with  nothing else but wincing burns spread over his body, an erection that was more aroused by the idea than he, in his head, was on his own, and Peter looming over him, seizing control he already had. And waiting, for the next moment, standing with knobby knees.

It felt like an hour passed before Peter came back to him, with a distinct slap, the sting of a belt against the backs of Felix’s knees. He fell down, supported up on his arms and legs, all-fours. Not exactly a position he’d never been in before. Peter’s laugh vibrated down the tunnels of his ears.

A fist in Felix’s hair, Peter lurched his head back, tongue darting down his spine, leaving a thick wet wake behind him, crawling, covering his body. The scratch of cotton affronting against burnt skin.

“Head down.”

Felix obliged, his forehead thunked against the cold dirty floor of the dorm. The hard corner of the rug grazed against his hair. Peter murmured a spell, and every nerve ending on Felix’s skin shook, seized, bumped into each other and built up a frenzy.

How much time passed between Peter lighting him up, and building up his _want,_ brick by brick, building up his need, and then - his inaction?

Felix knew his whimper didn’t aid the eroticism, but he hurt in seven different ways and wouldn’t mind making it eight if Peter would just touch him. Hands, he wanted hands.

Peter never tied his limbs.

It felt like a suicide mission, and certainly ill-advised, but next moment that spun through nothingness, and Felix spun around, reaching blindly, found Peter kneeling beside him. Hands found body, skin, smooth and warm. He made out the shape of Peter’s body as the kid, rather than lurching out and stopping him, rolled into it like waves lapping up against the shore. Felix felt Peter’s heartbeat against the palm of his hand, so fast and buzzing, imprinting his skin. He could imagine the expression and wondered, if after all that, this was what Peter had wanted to happen. A hand cupping between Peter’s thighs, and judging by the heat, the damp layer of precome, and it’s a pretty decent bet.

“Well,” Peter swallowed, voice thick and delayed. “Look who’s mixing things up.”

                _Wasn’t that the idea?_ Felix thought, moved to speak, forgetting for a beat the muting muffling scarf between his teeth, over his lips.

                Peter didn’t seem to want the answer anyhow, instead slapping his hand against the small of his back, and with his next breath, Felix could feel flames licking up from his fingertips. The dance of them against Peter’s nails, digging nails, burning as fire danced over his skin, heat, pain, Peter’s mouth up by his throat again, teeth close enough to rip it out, lips and tongue indulging his favorite places from below. Fire running on his spine, up the curve of his back. Teeth on the shell of his ear, the flame on Peter’s hand hit his shoulder blades. The mix of pain and pleasure and burning and pheromones reacted - vinegar and baking soda - he whined, he twitched, and before he could stop himself, the warmth spread all over, hips thrust on their own, and he was a mess, humping against the cotton on Peter’s clothes, spurting out, relief and euphoria crashing head to toe.

                And when he was done, Peter removed the blindfold first. His hair was messy, but otherwise he looked completely unscathed. Felix could only imagine what he looked like, sporting a hickey on his neck and burn welts all up and down his body. The gag came next, and there was nothing to do but kiss him.

                And Peter, as though they’d just fucking gone on a nice cliche dinner date, chuckles softly. “I think you’re a bit of a masochist, Felix.”

                “I’d have to be,” Felix replied, mouth peppering the side of Peter’s with attention, “To keep up with you.”

                “Shall I make a habit of it?”

                Felix only smiled by way of reply, knowing that Peter knew that he knew that he would if he wanted to, wouldn’t if he didn’t, and Felix could find a way to be satisfied by him one way or another. Wasn’t that what friends did? Live and die and fuck for each other? Like their face was the fucking sun and its reflection on the ocean and the tides and moon and monsoon and eternity and everything. Because whatever _that_ was, that was what it was like to be with Peter. Exhausted, but feeling Peter’s cock still ready to go, he changed the subject. “How do you want to get off?”

                “Blunt, aren’t you?” Peter grinned, standing up easily, and somehow didn’t make it look ridiculous as he took a seat on the lower bunk, legs crossed. “But you’ll have to use your imagination. That _is_ the point.”

                Too exhausted to stand gracefully, Felix stumbled to his feet and joined Peter. He didn’t have magic, didn’t have toys or tools or anything to make Peter scream like he had. But he did have words. He always had a knack for picking them out.

                So, using his forearm to shepherd Peter on his back, met with brief resistance before Peter understood the request, Felix crawled over him. Such an odd concept, sitting over Peter Pan, straddling him, hand wrapped snug around his cock, tube of lubricant discarded beside the pillow the second he’d gotten a big enough glob. And he craned, lower, lower, like an elevator shaft, till his mouth reached the ear. He slid his hand, whispering low, “Let me tell you.”

And Peter keened into his mouth, into his hands.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final Note
> 
> And with this, we reach the end of the fic!
> 
> I can’t believe I’m finishing up this story, now. This will probably be my last long fic for Panlix, Neverland, and maybe even OUAT in general. If the muses decide to smile, you can expect a oneshot here or there, but for the most part, this was the grand finale. Thank you all so much for being a wonderful fandom to be involved in, for all your feedback and kudos and appreciation of this story and all my stories over the years.. I’ve absolutely loved my time with you guys. <3
> 
> Acknowledgements 
> 
> This story was, I think, a much more social endeavor than any of my other projects I’ve taken in the past three years - maybe ever - and I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone - people who answered questions I’d shoot out into space on Tumblr, people who read through drafts and answered polls, everyone in fandom who has encouraged me to look at characters or concepts in different ways or altered my headcanon with a meta here or a fic there, and of course everyone who saw this fic and read it along the way! <3
> 
> Specifically, I’d like to thank (alphabetically) 
> 
> gildscipe - For amazing help in characterization, for Felix in particular, and his reactions to Pan’s reasonings. You had so many extremely amazing ideas that I haven’t even thought of - your attention to detail on these boys is absolutely gorgeous and incredible. Characterization would be a whole helluva lot flimsier without your thoughts. 
> 
> HotMolasses - For plotting help. You are absolutely the Grand Royal Highness of plotting, a skill that I covet on a daily basis. You sat through my synopses and helped me brainstorm event ideas and various ways this could go one way or another. The story would not have a grounded direction if not for you. 
> 
> Morgan from Real Life - You will probably never see this, but nevertheless thank you for checking the Spanish in regards to Henry and Regina and giving me cultural pointers (like taking a long time to say goodbye on the phone) to help me write up accurate accounts. You know how important I consider the little details, and I’m forever grateful you took time from your vacation to IM me the translations. Muchas gracias. 
> 
> pandasushiroll - Looking through the early drafts and giving me the final comments I needed to turn this story on its head and change the focuses. Your help made this piece flow so much better, more clearly, and on a whole more cohesive and helped orient the focus around the details that pop. 
> 
> z0mbieshake - For reading through early drafts and brainstorming various aspects of their particular dynamic. I feel like I cannot possibly be ready to post any story before you take a whack at it. Your notes on my first drafts are always so helpful in figuring out tone and direction, they boost my confidence in my drafts so much and orient me in ways to make them better. Also for all the emails we’ve collected over time to create our own counter-canon, and even though this story didn’t stick with it to a T, you’re always such a massive influence on my writing!


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